Changing GPGME's license

Werner Koch wk@gnupg.org
Mon Jul 21 18:00:03 2003


On Sun, 20 Jul 2003 23:29:17 +0200, Bernd Eckenfels said:

> this will not work, unless you find one sponsor who will then publish the
> now free GPGME. Since the first person who can get a LGPL license can

Correct.  Obviously paying for a license change can only be a one-time thing.

> republish it. It would work with a commercial additional license (like MySQL
> AB is doing it), but I guess werner can't do that because of FSF copyright?

I am not considering doual licensing.  We wrote GPGME from scratch;
for LGPLing it we might need to replace some very small parts taken
from other GNU software.

> one tool using GPGME, which is the gaim-e plugin. This is clearly a proof
> for the total failure of the project. Even on my debian system GPA is the
> only tool using GPGME, besides a python binding.

I don't want to argue about it, but at least I know a couple of more
projects projects using it.

> Too heavy weighted, restricted features, restrictive license, and ever so
> often Werner is answering help requests with "if you are willing to pay"....

Bernd, that is a bit unfair.  Marcus is answering most requests.  It
is true that I have said several times, that we don't care about a
Windows port unless we have a good reason to do it (paid for or within
a larger project).  BTW, Sylpheed for Windows still uses GPGME.

> experience, i am quite sure, that GPGME is full of ugly hacks, and I dont
> wonder why it is such a moving target, but I am sure, this was the right

A moving target?  With just one API rework in the current devel branch
and only minor changes in the past (leading to *ABI* changes).  I am
confused.


Salam-Shalom,

   Werner

-- 
Werner Koch                                      <wk@gnupg.org>
The GnuPG Experts                                http://g10code.com
Free Software Foundation Europe	                 http://fsfeurope.org