Re: pthreads

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Tue, 29 Jan 2008, Stefan Bienert wrote:
> > it then includes source components which are GPL even if the built package 
> > is not GPL.  You might be required to provide notice of that.
>
> OK, now I'm a little bit confused. It is OK to distribute your configure.ac 
> with all the macro calls while having your own license on the package? I

This is why the macros provide a special exception case for when the 
result of using them is incorporated in a configure script.

Note that most of these special exceptions don't seem to cover the 
case that the macro is incorporated into aclocal.m4 by the 'aclocal' 
program or if the package maintainer decides to include the original 
.m4 file in his package, or copy it into acinclude.m4.

> macro code? Wait, calling a macro is legally not the same as copying code, 
> right? Urk, my head starts aking. Why can't life be as simple as C?

Using a macro typically inserts code from the macro into the configure 
script.  Using 'aclocal' to make sure that all the macros are defined 
independent of packages (e.g. autoconf, automake, libtool) installed 
on the system happens to copy those macros (verbatim) into an 
aclocal.m4 file (as needed).

Bob
======================================
Bob Friesenhahn
address@hidden, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/