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

[Zoltan Somogyi]

On Thu, 7 Jun 2018 23:21:02 +1000 (AEST), Julien Fischer <jfischer at opturion.com> wrote:

> > +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.

Are ssdb grades ready for use, and are they publicly documented?

If not, there is no particular hurry, though it would be nice to fix its license
now, rather than later.

> > +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.)

It seems I am the only who has ever committed anything to test_bitset.m
either in its original location in the compiler directory or its current location
in the library, so I can give permission to change it to COPYING.LIB.

> 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.

Actually, I think we should delete the mention of the license. When you run
"mdb ./prog", mdb is not a separate program. It is in fact linked into prog, and
the mdb script does nothing except set up environment variables that are then
interpreted by code in the Mercury libraries linked  into prog.

> The trace and browser libraries (which implment mdb) are LGPL; what makes mdb
> GPL? 

As explained above: nothing.

Zoltan.