[gpgme] Windows DLL: 1.0.2 vs. 0.3.16

[Werner Koch]

On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 09:54:57 -0600, Mark Riordan said:

> Hello.  I have some questions about using GPGME in our
> commercial Windows application.  I understand that recent versions

[Running a Free Software business, I have to mention that commercial
is not the opposite of Free Software.  In fact our software is
commercial Free Software.  I presume that you meant proprietary
software.]

> 1.  A few messages from October 2004 imply that the Windows version
> of GPGME cannot be commercially used because it uses the Qt library.

gpgme itself is independent from Qt.

> I quote:

> "Unfortunately, we cannot use gpgme under Windows because Qt is non-GPL over
> there.  This is why I opted to make my own code (this, and also because

A few days ago Trolltech announced that future Qt versions will be GPL
on Windows too.

> "Psi cannot use gpgme on Windows due to legal reasons"
> http://listserver.dreamhost.com/pipermail/psi-devel-affinix.com/2004-October/000809.html

That is not anymore true because GPGME is now available under the LGPL
and thus compatible with QT and all other software.  There is however
the practical need to use gpgme as a DLL with non-GPL compatible
software to satisfy the terms of LGPL.  The other option would be to
provide a way to relink the application statically (similar what
Novell did with Netware before version 3).

> The older version was released under the GPL, not the LGPL.
> Does the recent change in license terms from GPL to LGPL
> retroactively apply to this older version?  I saw this note
> from July 2003:

No, it does not.  We don't suggest the use of the old versions anymore
and we don't want to spend time maintaining any version below 1.0.

> By the way, we would be willing to pay a fee to get a
> Win32 DLL version of GPGME 1.0.2.

Please contact me at wk at g10code.com to talk about this.

Hth,

  Werner