Re: [chmspec-devel] Request for exception to GPL license

[Paul Wise]

Apologies for the lateness of this reply.

On Sat, 2010-09-11 at 13:40 -0400, Robert Pyron wrote:

> I'm implementing a CHM reader in Python, based on Jed Wing's libchm,
> and guided by chmspec. So far I am able to read (and extract useful
> information from) #STRINGS, #SYSTEM, #TOCIDX, #TOPICS, #URLSTR, and
> #URLTBL. There is enough functionality already implemented to be
> useful to others, and I am almost ready to make an initial source
> release.

Is there any particular reason you are starting from scratch instead of
just using one of the many existing readers?

> I need to decide on a license for my code. Since I connect to libchm
> (which is LGPL), and since this code is not intended to be
> stand-alone, I would like to release it under LGPL. My problem is that
> comments in my code quote liberally from chmspec, which is GPL.
> 
> Is it possible to get an exception to GPL in this case, as long as the
> quoted text remains as part of my source file (or files)?

Regardless of the licensing question I would prefer that you refer to
the spec itself rather than duplicating part of it in your project.

On the licensing stuff, I'm not sure the GPL (or the LGPL) is the best
license for documentation anyway. In your case it would mean you would
have to distribute the DocBook source too. I need to think some more
about the right license.

-- 
bye,
pabs

http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/

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