Meld's Bazaar support

[Martin Pool]

On 23 Aug 2006, Robert Collins <robertc at robertcollins.net> wrote:
> On Tue, 2006-08-22 at 13:51 -0500, John Arbash Meinel wrote:
> > 
> > > That doesn't require distributing GPL'd code, it just calls into
> > > bzrlib (GPL'd) from meld (2-c BSD'd), which is fine AFAICT.  So, I
> > > don't see the licensing issue.  What am I missing?
> > 
> > That isn't legal.
> 
> Huh? Its perfectly legal to call a GPL library from a BSD program. You
> lose your licence to *distribute or copy* the GPL library, when you do
> that - the GPL is a distribution licence, not a use licence.
> 
> For C programs, this is rather fatal, because shipping a usable binary
> means shipping the binary of the GPL library, and the text included in
> your binary by the compilation process.
> 
> For python, the analogous thing is the .pyc or .pyo - which people do
> not ship anyway. 

This depends on whether Meld's code that integrates with bzrlib
constitutes a derived work.  As you say, with C, it is widely considered
that it would be.

> So its completely fine for meld.vc.bzr to be BSD and call into bzr. Its
> not fine if someone decides to ship meld/vc/bzr.py.

What do you mean by that sentence?

-- 
Martin