[m-dev.] [m-users.] Closed source Mercury projects on Windows

[Julien Fischer]

Hi Mark,

On Thu, 7 Jun 2018, Mark Brown wrote:

> On Wed, Jun 6, 2018 at 8:15 PM, Zoltan Somogyi
> <zoltan.somogyi at runbox.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Wed, 6 Jun 2018 15:54:03 +1000 (AEST), Julien Fischer <jfischer at opturion.com> wrote:
>>> It's probably better to get this dealt with once and for all.
>>
>> Agreed.
>
> You're probably both right; I'm just a little concerned about
> accidentally overreaching. Anyway, I've gone through extras, samples,
> and some other stuff too - attached is a diff for updates to
> COPYING.LIB and references to it in copyright messages. Could the two
> of you please review as much of this very boring diff as you can
> stand?
>
> Note that the wording of the copyright message still works for extras
> packages even if they happen to have a COPYING.LIB file of their own,
> which a couple do.

> Update the COPYING.LIB file and references to it.
> 
> Discussion of these changes can be found on the Mercury developers
> mailing list archives from June 2018.
> 
> COPYING.LIB:
>     Add a special linking exception to the LGPL.
> 
> *:
>     Update references to COPYING.LIB.
>
>     Clean up some minor errors that have accumulated in copyright
>     messages.
> 
> diff --git a/COPYING.LIB b/COPYING.LIB
> index eb685a5..49edafc 100644
> --- a/COPYING.LIB
> +++ b/COPYING.LIB
> @@ -1,3 +1,29 @@
> +In the following, "Mercury Core Libraries" refers to all source
> +code in the following directories of this distribution:
> +
> +    browser, java/runtime, library, mdbcomp, runtime, trace
> +
> +(No other part of this distribution is automatically linked into an
> +executable program by the Mercury system.)

The ssdb library is also automatically linked into programs.

> +The Mercury Core Libraries are distributed under the terms of the
> +GNU Library General Public License (LGPL) version 2 (included below).
> +
> +As a special exception to the GNU Library General Public License, you
> +may link, statically or dynamically, a "work that uses the Mercury
> +Core Libraries" with the Mercury Core Libraries to produce an
> +executable file containing portions of the Mercury Core Libraries,
> +and distribute that executable file under terms of your choice,
> +without any of the additional requirements listed in clause 6 of the
> +GNU Library General Public License. This exception does not however
> +invalidate any other reasons why the executable file might be covered
> +by the GNU Library General Public License. If you modify the Mercury
> +Core Libraries, you may extend this exception to your version, but you
> +are not obligated to do so. If you do not wish to do so, delete this
> +exception statement from your version.

The rest of your change looks fine; a couple of other things:

1. library/test_bitset.m is included in the library and is GPL licensed
according to the header comment.  (I know it's just test code, but it
is included in there.)

2. The mdb banner message is:

     Melbourne Mercury Debugger, mdb version %s.
     Copyright 1998-2012 The University of Melbourne.
     Copyright 2013-2018 The Mercury team.
     mdb is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License.
     There is absolutely no warranty for mdb.

The trace and browser libraries (which implment mdb) are LGPL; what makes mdb
GPL?  (*If* GNU readline is being used then yes, otherwise ...)

Julien.