Re: Integration of gettext in Perl

[Russ Allbery]

Thomas Bushnell, BSG <address@hidden> writes:
> Guido Flohr <address@hidden> writes:

>> The module will be available as free (GPL and/or Artistic) software.
>> Please do not publish the above URL, the home address of the package
>> will be on the CPAN (http://www.cpan.org/).

> The module can only be available as GPL; it cannot be put under the
> Artistic license without violating the GPL on gettext.

Guido, if I were you, I'd do something like the following.  Add a license
statement that looks like:

    All of the Perl and XS wrapping code in this distribution is
    distributed under the user's choice of the Artistic License and
    the GPL, the same license terms as Perl itself.

    Because this module embeds gettext, which is available only under
    the GPL, the results of compiling this module may be distributable
    only under the GPL.  If you intend to redistribute this module
    under the Artistic License, this may be in violation of the license
    on gettext.  This matter is legally unclear, and I'm not a lawyer.
    If you wish to do this, please check with a qualified copyright
    attorney before doing so.

    If you distribute this code under the terms of the GPL, there
    should not, as I understand it, be any problems with compatibility
    with the gettext license.  If you extract code from this
    distribution unrelated to gettext and use it in other works, you
    may do so under the Artistic License or under the GPL at your
    choice.

The people who care a lot about licenses will then be happy regardless of
their interpretations of the law and you can go back to hacking on code
without having to worry about this.

(Please note:  I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.  I believe
this matter to be simply enough resolved that if I were you I'd just say
the above and would feel quite comfortable with that, but it's possible
that there may be some subtle legal flaw in the above reasoning.  If this
is particularly important to you, you'll need to consult an attorney.)

-- 
Russ Allbery (address@hidden)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>