maria-developers team mailing list archive

["Vladislav Vaintroub" <wlad@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kristian Nielsen [mailto:knielsen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Dienstag, 1. Februar 2011 14:59
> To: Vladislav Vaintroub
> Cc: maria-developers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; serg@xxxxxxxxxxxx; Michael Widenius
> Subject: Re: [Maria-developers] Windows installer MWL#55 finished.
> 
> "Vladislav Vaintroub" <wlad@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> 
> > Wizard is an MFC application. I'm sorry for that, but my Windows C/C++ GUI programming experience is not only rusty (prior to
this
> > WL last time I used it was more than  a decade ago), it is also restricted to MFC only. Being MFC application, it will require
at
> > least VS Professional to build.  There is no MFC in  free Visual Studio Express edition,  nor in free Windows SDK.  Build and
> > packaging process will handle missing MFC gracefully (build won't try to compile upgrade wizard,  package won't include it , and
> > installer won't  start it at the end of installation).
> 
> What license are we distributing the wizard source code under?

> The reason I ask is that because of the above dependency, GPL may not be
> appropriate (and since it sounds like a new application, nor is it
> necessary). So we might consider another license, eg. BSD or if prefered some
> other more copy-left license. Or just GPL-with-MFC-exception.
> 
> I don't really have an opinion myself for one license or the other, I just
> wanted to point out the issue to make sure it is considered by those that do
> care. Since it sounds like if we just use GPL, we may be releasing something
> that formally others cannot redistribute without violating the license. Which
> I think we should avoid, even if we're obviously not planning to sue anyone
> over it ...

Not sure I'm correct person  to start discussions over the of GPL, I think I'm not qualified.

I do know there is a plenty of established open source projects that use MFC, including GPLv2, such as different incarnations of
Tortoise (SVN,CVS, BZR, HG).

>From my point of view,  it is just a  system library. It came bundled with compiler, just like other library CRT which is non-GPL
that we use extensively for quite important functionality like strcpy() or say fopen().  Maybe this explanation will satisfy GPL
purists. I do not think CRT , MFC , ATL (libraries that come bundled with Visual Studio) have any written license, at least I have
never seen one. The source code is available, and installed together with Visual Studio.  If  one needs to redistribute one of this
libraries  as DLLs, there is Microsoft EULA that basically allows inclusion into any software . But we do not even do that, as we
link Visual Studio libraries (CRT, and also MFC now) statically, MySQL-ish way.

>  - Kristian.