Re: [fluid-dev] Linking with GPL libraries

[Bernat Arlandis i Mañó]

David Henningsson escrigué:
> The people we're messing it up for is not ourselves, it's for
> applications which links with libfluidsynth AND are not GPL-compatible
> (contains code released under MPL, a proprietary license etc). Assuming
> Debian links with readline/liblash by default, they must provide their
> own compiled version of libfluidsynth, which does not link with
> readline/liblash.
>
> Anyway this is a "gotcha" that we should mention somewhere in the
> documentation.
>
>   
Correct, this is a issue is for non-free applications linking to GPL 
libraries, it's not an issue for us or Debian. License mixing always 
have "gotchas" and tend to get a hot subject of discussion for non-lawyers.

FS has been in Debian for a long time, I doubt there's any problem with 
the license, there's no privative software in Debian and I guess there's 
a lot of packages in the same case, but you could ask your mentor in 
case it worries you.
> > Does anyone use LASH?  I would miss the readline support, that is for
> > sure.
> >     
>
> As for readline, it could perhaps be replaced with editline, which is
> under BSD license.
>
> Looking it up in Debian (popcon) shows that:
> 104 people have installed lashd
> 688 people have installed liblash2
> 5790 people have installed libfluidsynth
>
>   
Having support for editline wouldn't hurt at all as long as it has all 
needed features, but you don't need to drop readline support, they're 
call-compatible and so you can make it a build option.

I think LASH is already optional so we don't need to do anything, unless 
you know of an alternative library that could be a second option, as 
with readline.

--
Bernat Arlandis i Mañó