Re: EEL vs. GAL

[John Heard <John Heard Sun COM>]

Miguel,

What is the rationale for using GPL versus LGPL. I have always considered that GNOME
followed a plan to use LGPL for libraries and runtime services. I guess you do not
see GAL becoming a part of the GNOME platform.

This is an important point if we want to see GNOME become a platform used by a broad
group of developers - including non-GNU open source as well as commercial ISV's.
GPL'd libraries cannot be used by a broad community.

If we want to recruit more GNOME hackers, we need to enlarge the community to include
other open source groups and ISV's.

I suggest very strongly that you reconsider using LGPL for GAL.

Rgds
John

Miguel de Icaza wrote:

> > 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.
>
> _______________________________________________
> gnome-hackers mailing list
> gnome-hackers gnome org
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-hackers