Re: The Guile license and the use of LGPL libs (like GMP).

[Rob Browning]

Bruce Korb <address@hidden> writes:

>>   2) Use GMP, but have a configure switch that allows you to omit it,
>>      either with fallback non-GMP bignum support, or perhaps no
>>      bignums at all.
>
> If this bypasses the licensing issue, great.

It should.

>>   3) Ask the relevant parties whether or not they might be willing to
>>      extend the guile exception to GMP, i.e. add a special Guile
>>      clause to the GMP license.
>
> Murky.  Probably legally okay, but businesses want to focus on
> business and not wrestle with murky issues.

Hmm.  If the GMP license could be changed to have a Guile exception
(identical to the one in the current Guile license), then I don't see
how it's really any murkier on this front than the status quo.

>>   4) Abandon GMP and continue to do things ourselves.
>
> Better than #1 or #3.

Not for all purposes -- depends on what your goals are -- if we want a
full numeric tower that's *fast* on multiple platforms, my impression
is we may be better leaving that to numeric experts like the people
working on GMP.

-- 
Rob Browning
rlb @defaultvalue.org, @linuxdevel.com, and @debian.org
Previously @cs.utexas.edu
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