Bug#680738: salome-gui: links with both GPL-licensed and GPL-incompatible libraries

[Francesco Poli]

reopen 680738
thanks


On Wed, 11 Jul 2012 19:06:19 +0200 Francesco Poli wrote:

[...]
> the OmniORB libraries SALOME links with really
> seem to be licensed under the GNU LGPL v2 or later, posing no issues
> with Open CASCADE.
> 
[...]
> I am sorry of reporting a non-issue: I am closing the bug
> report.
> 
> I am happy to see that there's one package less affected by the Open
> CASCADE GPL-incompatibility, even though the Open CASCADE
> GPL-incompatibility itself remains unsolved, unfortunately...

Hello again.

I've been pointed out that SALOME also uses PyQt, which is
dual-licensed [1] under the GNU GPL v2 or the GNU GPL v3.

[1] http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/main/p/python-qt4/current/copyright

Although the linking is done through bindings for an interpreted
language (Python), the FSF FAQ [2] confirms that this linking also
triggers the requirement of GPL-compatibility for SALOME.

[2] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#IfInterpreterIsGPL

This seems to mean that we are back in square one: SALOME links with
both GPL-licensed (PyQT) and GPL-incompatible libraries (OCE).

I am therefore reopening this bug report.


Possible solutions, in descending order of desirability:

 (A) Open CASCADE S.A.S. should be contacted and persuaded to
re-license Open CASCADE Technology under GPLv2-and-v3-compatible terms.

 (B) liboce-* packages should be substituted with a
GPLv2-and-v3-compatible replacement, if any is available.

 (C) PyQT copyright holders should be asked to re-license their work
under the GNU LGPL or otherwise add license exceptions that give
permission to link their work with code released under the OCTPL.


Once again, any help in pushing solution (A) will be greatly
appreciated.
Thanks for your time.


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