[Libguestfs] Hivex licensing question

[Jim Meyering]

Yandell, Henri wrote:

> On 11/26/10 10:48 AM, "Jim Meyering" <jim at meyering.net> wrote:
>
>> Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
>
>>> The Makefiles are GPL, but they don't affect the library or the
>>> programs in any way.  They constitute a separate program used to build
>>> the software.
>>>
>>> Rich.
>>>
>>> CC'd to Jim: This analysis is a pain, and gnulib-tool doesn't let you
>>> say "I want to use LGPL for this directory and GPL for this other
>>> directory".
>>
>> Yes, that is inconvenient.
>> The alternative is to have two separate gnulib-style libraries,
>> one with the lgplv2+ modules you use, and another for those
>> additional ones that you use from gplv3 applications.
>> But that is a lot of inconvenience for not much gain.
>>
>> This has been lamented and discussed/justified several times
>> on the bug-gnulib mailing list.
>
> Taking that as a hint not to go charging off onto bug-gnulib@, and looking
> at the bug-gnulib archive, Bruno Haible says in
> http://www.mail-archive.com/bug-gnulib@gnu.org/msg20323.html:
>
> "The header is updated automatically when you import the file into your
> project, assuming you invoke gnulib-tool with the option --lgpl or
> --lgpl=2."
>
> Is this a solution Hivex can use?

To use that it would have to run gnulib-tool twice (once with
one --lgpl=... option and once with the other), creating two
separate library directories, as I suggested above.

That's the inconvenience I mentioned.  IMHO, it would be
prohibitive in a project the size of hivex, at least
until/if gnulib-tool ever becomes more efficient.