Re: EEL vs. GAL

[Miguel de Icaza <miguel ximian com>]

> I've never really been clear on why GAL is GPLed, it seems that it just makes
> it a pain in the arse for us to make these very useful widgets part of the
> standard platform.

The explanation is simple, it is on the README file of GAL:

> This module contains some library functions that came from Gnumeric and
> Evolution.  The idea is to reuse the code across various larger GNOME
> applications that might want to use it.  The API is not frozen and might change
> at any time.  Larger class renaming might happen at any point without notice.
> Use this library at your own risk.
> 
> We envision some of this code being moved to Gtk+ or Gnome-Libs at
> some point, but not before 2.0, and certainly we don't know which ones
> yet.
> 
> If you want to contribute code to Gal, you need to contact the maintainers of
> this module as with any other module in GNOME, as the maintainers are the
> people which will have to deal with bug reports, compilation problems,
> portability issues and quality assurance.
> 
> Things are currently licensed under the terms of the GNU GPL (with the
> exception of the gtk-combo-box and gtk-combo-stack which are under the LGPL).  
> 
> Miguel.