KBabel/win32: GNU gettext license

[Jaroslaw Staniek]

I am forwarding this here because kde-licensing is currently not so active:

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: KBabel/win32: GNU gettext license
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 17:30:01 +0100
From: Jaroslaw Staniek <js at iidea.pl>
Reply-To: kde-licensing at kde.org, js at iidea.pl

Hi,
GNU gettext is provided under the GPL. But we've used the sources in 
desdk/kbabel/common/libgettext/.
KBabel is GPLed too, but recently we're adding an license exception to be able
to deliver KBabel/win32 compiled with commercial Qt/win32 as many people
asked. AFAIK, virually all KBabel authors agree on the exception, but I am not
sure about status of source code in kdesdk/kbabel/common/libgettext/.

The funny thing is that gettext already links to non-GPL library, 'msvcrt',
within Cygwin project and similar efforts:

http://gettext.sourceforge.net/

GPL license allows to link with nonGPL runtime libraries shipped with
compiler. That's unclear because we can pretty well consider unmodified Qt as
an runtime. 'Where's the boundary?' question looks like a philosophical issue
for me.


Here's a bit of discussion with dfaure:
----------
jstaniek	dfaure: hmm, about kbabel/common/libgettext...
	|<--	bram85 has left irc.freenode.net (Remote closed the connection)
	jstaniek	dfaure: that's funny because cygwin released it
	dfaure	hmm so?
	jstaniek	and even if this is still GPL...
	jstaniek	it is dynlinked with non-GPL stuff
	jstaniek	i mean: msvcrt.dll
	jstaniek	(otherwise it coudnt display on the console)
	dfaure	I don't know msvcrt's license. AFAIK the problem is linking GPL code
to Qt.
	jstaniek	no problem with extracting common/libgettext to separate GPL lib
	dfaure	hmm you're right, it's "qt code linking to GPL code" here, not "GPL
code linking to qt code"
	jstaniek	msvcrt is far 'more closed' than any Qt
	dfaure	not sure about that - if it allows anything to link to it...
	jstaniek	http://gettext.sourceforge.net/
	jstaniek	dfaure: we've got a fundamental problem here : "Is Qt a runtime for us"
	jstaniek	it's for me here
	jstaniek	but since common/libgettext/ doesn't link to qt. . the problem is
solved, yeah?
----------

Any advices welcome! Anything that allow us to go forward.

Eventually we can make a separate process, run it, and communicate via
stdin/stdout channels with it.

-- 
regards / pozdrawiam,
  Jaroslaw Staniek / OpenOffice Polska / Kexi Team
  Developers Wanted! Kexi 0.1 Beta 5 Released: http://www.kexi-project.org
  KDElibs/Windows: http://wiki.kde.org/tiki-index.php?page=KDElibs+for+win32