Deimos X11 bindings license question

Steven Schveighoffer via Digitalmars-d digitalmars-d at puremagic.com
Wed Sep 13 10:55:43 PDT 2017


On 9/13/17 11:48 AM, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:
> On Wednesday, 13 September 2017 at 15:15:11 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer 
> wrote:
>> Shouldn't the bindings be licensed identical to the actual library code?
> 
> The library code isn't being distributed, so I don't think it matters.

Technically no. You can let the user of the bindings do his own research 
and find out that libx11 really isn't Boost licensed, and that he has to 
pay careful attention to what the *actual* license for libX11 is. Note 
BTW, the C headers are included in the distribution, and those are NOT 
boost licensed. I'm not a lawyer, so I have no idea the compatibility 
implications between the two.

Or you could just inform the user of the discrepancy, and let him avoid 
wasted time. Or just license the same as the original library.

When I first read this change of license from GPL to Boost, I thought 
there was a significant problem here. But it's much more innocuous, 
since neither the real library is GPL nor the bindings need to be GPL. 
However, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me to use boost rather 
than the X11 license.

In any case, consider this as somewhat of a warning -- try to license 
your bindings the same as the original library, or you may cause 
significant problems for your users unnecessarily.

-Steve


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