Preprocessors

[Isaac Jones]

Graham Klyne <GK at ninebynine.org> writes:

> At 17:26 20/10/04 +0200, Sven Panne wrote:
>>Henrik Nilsson wrote:
>>>[...] (Unless everyone
>>>uses "cpphs", then, which ultimately would seem like a good idea.)
>>
>>If you mean "everyone happy with a LGPL", then I would agree. But GHC and
>>Hugs use a BSD-style license, so cpphs is not an option for them.
>
> I'm not a lawyer, but I don't agree with this assessment.

I'm not a lawyer either, but I don't think there's any problem
distributing an LGPL-licensed program with a BSD-Style-licenced
program.  For one thing, the LGPL states:

    In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the
    Library with the Library (or with a work based on the Library) on
    a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the
    other work under the scope of this License.

further:

    5. A program that contains no derivative of any portion of the
       Library, but is designed to work with the Library by being
       compiled or linked with it, is called a "work that uses the
       Library". Such a work, in isolation, is not a derivative work
       of the Library, and therefore falls outside the scope of this
       License.

But who knows... cpphs isn't a library and a lot of the terms of the
license are stated explicitly in terms of libraries.

I always think of the LGPL that, "You can USE it with whatever kind of
license you want, but if you alter it and redistribute it, you must do
so under the terms of the LGPL or the GPL."

peace,

  isaac