Re: RFC: proposed GPLv3 license exception draft

[Eric Blake]

Ralf Wildenhues <Ralf.Wildenhues <at> gmx.de> writes:

> Below, I try to summarize the issues that have been brought up, and
> will ask the FSF legal dept. about them; I'm writing the text mostly
> as I will send it to them, adding some explanations.  If I missed out
> anything important, or formulated wrongly, then please by all means
> correct me.  Thanks!
> 
> 1) The Exception does not take into account some types of outputs from
> programs that Autoconf distributes, namely Autotest testsuite scripts
> which are generated in a similar fashion as configure scripts; maybe
> even other current or future script products; and also the output of
> the autoheader, autoupdate, and autoscan programs.

For that matter, the old GPLv2 exception mentioned "configure scripts" in the 
first paragraph, then went on to describe all "data" portions of the Autoconf 
source that were copied as Autoconf output in the second paragraph (autotest 
certainly counts as Autoconf output, since autom4te is one of the Autoconf 
programs).  So the original exception was already ambiguous on whether autotest 
was covered by the exemption, and a cleanup in this area will be a nice 
clarification of our intent.

> 3) It is unclear whether configure scripts which fall under this
> Exception really can be treated as they could with the old GPLv3
> exception clause.

s/GPLv3/GPLv2/

-- 
Eric Blake