KBabel/win32: GNU gettext license

[Stanislav Visnovsky]

It seems the best would be reimplement the single function KBabel really
needs and drop the original gettext implementation.

I will do it (using other algorithm for approximate string matching) soon.

Stano


Dňa Ut 7. December 2004 12:15 Jaroslaw Staniek napísal:
> 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.