[Ccrtp-devel] Need clarification on the license exception

[Hardy, Allan]

Firstly, as an FYI, I am getting DNS errors while trying to access the links at the Gnu site (http://www.gnu.org/software/ccrtp/)

They all seem to point to a url with ‘wiki’ as a prefix - "http://wiki.gnutelephony.org"  and that doesn’t work

 

Ok, my question is on licensing.  The license has an exception clause, basically for linking so that other software using this are excepted from the GPL licensing reciprocity.

 

“As a special exception, you may use this file as part of a free software library without restriction.  Specifically, if other files instantiate templates or use macros or inline functions from this file, or you compile this file and link it with other files to produce an executable, this file does not by itself cause the resulting executable to be covered by the GNU General Public License.  This exception does not however invalidate any other reasons why the executable file might be covered by the GNU General Public License.”

 

My question is about the scope of this exception, what does ‘as part of a free software library’ mean?    Was the intent to only have ccRTP only work with other FOSS products?  Other ‘free software’? 

 

If we include ccRTP into a deliverable to US Gov, under a standard Gov purpose license, was that intended to be allowed?

(this wouldn’t be a general commercial software, but a specialized solution built for US Gov agency)

 

Please advise, we are trying to do the right thing by your intention

 

Allan Hardy