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

[Mark Brown]

On Sat, Jun 9, 2018 at 5:46 AM, Julien Fischer <jfischer at opturion.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Mark,
>
> On Sat, 9 Jun 2018, Mark Brown wrote:
>
>>> I suspect the only user may be the MSVC port; my Windows machine is at
>>> work, so I can't check until tomorrow.  *If* we do need to include it
>>> then we can replace the GNU implementation with the NetBSD one.
>>
>>
>> Have you had a chance to look into this?
>
>
> The getopt thing? Not yet, although I did bring my Windows machine
> home with me, so I'll try to get around to it this weekend.
>
>> Is the plan to replace readline with editline, or should I try to
>> document in COPYING.LIB the need to configure without readline?
>
>
> I've been looking into the editline stuff -- my recent fixes to some of
> the debugger tests cases were motivated by testing it.  Editline is not
> as extensive as readline, so even if we do support it, readline will be
> the preferred option (i.e. the default).
>
> COPYING.LIB doesn't need to modified IMO; there's already a file named
> LICENSE that summarizes the licensing of Mercury and third
> party components used by Mercury.  That would a more suitable place for
> a note about the licensing implications of readline.  (That file also
> needs to be updated to mention the linking exception on the Mercury
> libraries if you haven't done so already.)

Diff for that last point is attached. I think I'll leave off trying to
document the implications configuring with readline for now, since the
change hasn't made any claims about how programs can be distributed
anyway.

I wonder if we could add a configure option like
`--enable-closed-source-distribution` which disables configuration of
anything, like readline, that may impede distribution of closed-source
binaries? That would also help ensure that no new libraries sneak into
your project when you update Mercury.

Mark
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diff --git a/LICENSE b/LICENSE
index 1c11a5c..0d9b3b4 100644
--- a/LICENSE
+++ b/LICENSE
@@ -5,10 +5,9 @@ Copyright (C) 2013-2018 The Mercury team.
 The compiler and tools are distributed under the terms of the GNU
 General Public License.  See the file COPYING for copying permission.
 
-The Mercury libraries and runtime (the files in the library, trace,
-browser, ssdb, mdbcomp, runtime and java/runtime subdirectories) are
-distributed under the terms of the GNU Library General Public License.
-See the file COPYING.LIB for copying permissions for those files.
+The Mercury core libraries (the files in the browser, java/runtime,
+library, mdbcomp, runtime, ssdb and trace subdirectories) are
+distributed under the terms specified in the file COPYING.LIB.
 
 If those licensing arrangements are not satisfactory, please
 contact us.  We are willing to offer alternative arrangements,