Use of admin directory in project templates

[John Firebaugh]

On Wednesday 20 March 2002 11:45, Simon Hausmann wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 20, 2002 at 11:30:06PM -0800, John Firebaugh wrote:
> > As I understand it, we specifically allow and support development of
> > commercial software with kdevelop. So how is it that we can claim this,
> > but distribute project templates all of which contain GPL'd source, i.e.
> > most of the scripts and templates in the admin directory?
>
> Where exactly do you see a problem with the files in admin/ ?

Ok, surveying the licenses: some files have no license information at all 
(am_edit, conf.change.pl, config.pl, debianrules). Some files are LGPL 
(acinclude.m4.in, configure.in.min). Some files have the specific exception 
for use with autoconf (config.guess, config.sub, libtool.m4.in, ltmain.sh, 
missing, ylwrap). depcomp is GPL. install-sh, ltconfig-public and 
mkinstalldirs are public domain. install-sh has a custom license.

> There is
>
> a) no direct linkage involved

Well, it's not clear to me that using the admin files under the LGPL 
constitutes "worked based on the library" or "work that uses the library." In 
either cases it seems I am bound by other specific provisions of the license, 
such as providing a copy of the license with the distribution. I would feel 
much more confortable using the admin directory at my work if _all_ the files 
in it contained a message similar to the following:

> # As a special exception to the GNU General Public License, if you
> # distribute this file as part of a program that contains a
> # configuration script generated by Autoconf, you may include it
> # under
> # the same distribution terms that you use for the rest of that
> # program.

later,
John