[Xapian-discuss] Re: [Swig-devel] license issue

[Sam Liddicott]

Just re-posting so swig-devel get so see it.

It's an architectural solution whereby swig has the power to banish licensing conflicts that may exist between any imported library and the target system for which swig is generating a module.

-----Original Message-----
From: "Sam Liddicott" <sam at liddicott.com>
To: "Alexander Lind" <malte at webstay.org>; "William S Fulton" <wsf at fultondesigns.co.uk>
Cc: swig-devel at lists.sourceforge.net; "Xapian Discussion" <xapian-discuss at lists.xapian.org>
Sent: 22/08/07 07:55
Subject: RE: [Xapian-discuss] Re: [Swig-devel] license issue

Sorry for top-quoting, darn pocket-outlook...

William, the problem as I see it, when the output of swig is compiled, that resulting .so is derived from swig (bsd license), also from php (Zend License) and also the GPL (in this case).

As the GPL and Zend License conflict there is no way to distribute the resulting .so according to the terms of both licenses simultaneously, so unless special specific permission is obtained, copyright law prohibits distribution of that compiled .so altogether. 

Do you see it this way?

If so (and I try to repeat myself more clearly), the only solution I see is to let the compiled swig output consist of 2 .so that confer at runtime, one specific to php (or other target) under a compliant license (as it must derive in part from the target system in order to link properly)), and likewise another .so related to the imported library, likewise licensed.

As the import-library .so is not derived from target it is not bound by the target license.
As the target-library (libswig.so now discontinued you say) will not derive from the import-library it is not bound by that license.
As swig own the target-library they can "not mind" that it is derived from parts of swig that the generated import library code is also derived from (the swig api).

Sam  


-----Original Message-----
From: "Alexander Lind" <malte at webstay.org>
To: "William S Fulton" <wsf at fultondesigns.co.uk>
Cc: swig-devel at lists.sourceforge.net; "Xapian Discussion" <xapian-discuss at lists.xapian.org>
Sent: 22/08/07 02:53
Subject: [Xapian-discuss] Re: [Swig-devel] license issue

William S Fulton wrote:
> I think this is a non-issue. The SWIG licence is a BSD style licence 
> so the SWIG source and supporting files, such as typemaps can be 
> incorporated into any other code. If you are using the source, then 
> you have to acknowledge the copyright holders. As you are probably not 
> shipping SWIG with xapian, then you don't need to even do that.
>
> In the past you might have had to ship the libswigphp.so runtime 
> library from SWIG, but now that is not needed and isn't even shipped 
> with SWIG anymore. Even if SWIG still shipped it, it was BSD style 
> licenced so can be linked to code compiled with just about anything else.
>
> IANAL etc.
>
Thank you for the info, William.

Now does this mean that the PHP bindings generated with SWIG are alright 
after all (ie does not violate the PHP license), or does it mean that 
they are not out of the woods yet, but that this can be fixed by just 
generating them in a different way?  Or neither?

Thanks
Alec

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