Re: RFC: proposed GPLv3 license exception draft

[Robert Collins]

On Tue, 2009-04-21 at 20:46 +0200, Ralf Wildenhues wrote:


> We hope that this new exception will help make Autoconf's licensing a
> little more clear and robust -- if also a little more verbose -- in the
> same way that GPLv3 has done for the entire free software community.  We
> are interested in hearing feedback from Autoconf developers about
> whether there might be intended good uses of the software that are not
> covered by this exception -- or conversely, known bad uses of the
> software that might be covered.  We're also interested in hearing if
> there are particular parts of the text that you think might be
> misunderstood by developers: it may not always be possible, but we'd
> like for this exception to be as clear as possible to as many people as
> possible.  If you're interested, please review the text and let us know
> what you think.
> 
> Below is the text of the proposed exception.
> 
> Thanks to Brett Smith for help in preparing this message.
> 
> --- cut ---
> 
> This Exception is an additional permission under section 7 of the GNU
> General Public License, version 3 ("GPLv3").
> 
> The purpose of this Exception is to allow distribution of Autoconf's
> typical output under terms of the recipient's choice (including
> proprietary).
> 
> 0. Definitions
> 
> "Covered Code" is any source code and/or object code of Autoconf that is a
> covered work under this License.
> 
> "Eligible Output Material" is Covered Code that is included in the
> standard, minimally verbose, non-debugging and non-tracing output of the
> version of Autoconf distributed to you under this License.  Moreover,
> "Eligible Output Material" may be comprised only of Covered Code that (a)
> must necessarily appear in Autoconf-generated configure scripts and (b) is
> required for those configure scripts to function.
> 
> "Ineligible Output Material" is Covered Code that is not Eligible Output
> Material.

...
> 2. No Weakening of Autoconf Copyleft.
> 
> The availability of this Exception does not imply any general presumption
> that third-party software is unaffected by the copyleft requirements of
> the license of Autoconf.

I have two comments:

Clause 2 seems like something that *should* be provided by the GPLv3
itself, or else all exceptions will need it, won't they? Should we have
a 'drafting an exception' guidebook somewhere.

Secondly, I wonder if the definition for EOM could be a little more
precise. Something like 'EOM consists of the helper scripts [x, y, z],
and the minimum configure script that can be output by autoconf to
configure a project. I guess I'm saying its not clear to me that saying
'minimally verbose non-debugging non-tracing' is sufficient - if someone
adds a non-debugging, non-tracing non-verbose mode that sucks in
autoconf evalution code to the output, it would be outside the intention
(that people get the right do $whatever with the code we create for
incorporation into configure, and don't get that right with the code we
create for creating configure).

-Rob

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