Re: "toll-free bridging"

[strobe anarkhos]

At 1:08 AM -0300 3/17/01, Pedro Ivo Andrade Tavares wrote:
>At 12:39 16/3/2001, you wrote:
>
>>Have you read the APSL 1.2? I have.
>>
>>The only restriction is they can use your modifications without royalty. This 
>>restriction doesn't even apply in this case because you don't need to modify 
>>Core Foundation.
>
>Actually, you do need to modify CF. I did the port of CoreFoundation to Linux, 
>and actually left some classes behind (all involving CFPort, since I did not 
>know anything about Mach ports) in the effort. Also, several classes were 
>modified to be ported from the Darwin/Win32/MacOSClassic trio, which are the 
>only platforms the code cared about originally. The code is not anywhere 
>nearly as portable as GNUstep: It only builds on Win32, Darwin, MacOS9 
>(Apple-maintained), Linux and FreeBSD (both probably bitrotted by now). Any 
>other platform will involve some hacking.

I never claimed it was more portable than GNUStep. I said two goals were 
portability and accessibility which ruled out GNUStep.

>
>One of the problems the FSF has with APSL is, if you use it, you're forced to 
>publish it. The GPL and LGPL only make you publish your changes if you 
>distribute the source code. That doesn't sound less restrictive to me.

Depends. Anyway I don't care to pit one against the other.

>
>That said, I have no problem with the APSL 1.2, and have contributed code 
>under it to Apple (my CF port to Linux).
>
>If you want to do a "toll-free bridge" under Linux, all you have to do is 
>start a new project (using no GNUstep code) and build an ObjC wrapper for CF. 
>This code could be under the LGPL or GPL, provided you included the clause 
>people used to recommend to programs using Qt: basically, something saying 
>"This program is covered by the [L]GPL. As an exception, you have the right to 
>link it to any APSL-licensed code (such as CF). This does not exclude any 
>other reasons there might be license incompatibilities with other code", or 
>somesuch. Take a look at the ObjC library license, for example (It's GPL, with 
>an exception that, if compiled under GCC, it doesn't make the resulting 
>executable GPL'd)

I have a feeling if I did that it would piss off the GNU zealots who seem to 
dominate the GNUStep project. Maybe that's a good reason to do it.