Re: BSD license problem of BiCon was non-issue

[Behdad Esfahbod <behdad at cs dot toronto dot edu>]

On Fri, 2 Apr 2004, Muhammad Alkarouri wrote:

> I hope that we learn from these. I am trying to make a summary of the
> Fribidi+PuTTY problem, please correct me if I am wrong:
> - Fribidi is LGPL licensed.
> - An LGPL licensed software cannot be legally used within an MIT
> licensed project, at least not with the result being MIT licensed.

Correct.

> - The PuTTY project needs to use BiDi code (equivalent to Fribidi) but
> does not want to use it as an external library (technical issues).

The whole point is that it's not a "technical issue".  I would
have been more than happy to change the FriBidi's license if it
was for techinacl issues, but it's more like personal
preferences.

> - Possible solutions:
> * Fribidi copyright owners change license to something more permissive
> or grant PuTTY an exception.

Granting PuTTY an exception does not work, because it means
people basing their work on PuTTY can not use it.

> * PuTTY uses other code with a less retrictive license, like the ICU
> library (MIT license).
> * PuTTY write their own code.

It's easy to say this, but I wait longer for them to see it's not
so easy...

--behdad
  behdad.org