ANN: Update to AdaGPGME and libgpg-error

ANN: Update to AdaGPGME and libgpg-error

[Andreas Almroth]

Hi all,

For those of you interested, I have updated the Ada95 bindings to;

* GPGME 1.0.2 (GnuPG Made Easy C API)
* libgpg-error 1.0 (common error message library for GnuPG components)

A few of the test programs have been ported to Ada95 to verify that the
bindings works, or at least partly. Change the makefile to correspond to 
your environment.

The bindings are tested with GCC 3.4.3 on Solaris, but it should be 
possible to compile on other platforms.

You will, obviously, need to install GnuPG 1.2.2+, libgpg-error 1.0 and 
gpgme 1.0.2 first.

The bindings can be found at;
AdaGPGME - http://www.almroth.com/gpgme/index.html
libgpg-error - http://www.almroth.com/libgpgerror.html

Any suggestions, comments and bugs are welcome and should be sent to
andreas at almroth dot com.

For more information on GPGME and libgpg-error, please visit;
http://www.gnupg.org/

/A

Re: ANN: Update to AdaGPGME and libgpg-error

[Jeff C]

Andreas Almroth wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> For those of you interested, I have updated the Ada95 bindings to;
> 
> * GPGME 1.0.2 (GnuPG Made Easy C API)
> * libgpg-error 1.0 (common error message library for GnuPG components)
> 
> A few of the test programs have been ported to Ada95 to verify that the
> bindings works, or at least partly. Change the makefile to correspond to 
> your environment.
> 
> The bindings are tested with GCC 3.4.3 on Solaris, but it should be 
> possible to compile on other platforms.
> 
> You will, obviously, need to install GnuPG 1.2.2+, libgpg-error 1.0 and 
> gpgme 1.0.2 first.
> 
> The bindings can be found at;
> AdaGPGME - http://www.almroth.com/gpgme/index.html
> libgpg-error - http://www.almroth.com/libgpgerror.html
> 
> Any suggestions, comments and bugs are welcome and should be sent to
> andreas at almroth dot com.
> 
> For more information on GPGME and libgpg-error, please visit;
> http://www.gnupg.org/
> 
> /A

Nice!

One note..While I am a big fan of the GMGPL approach, it is not really 
clear that it is entirely helpful in this case since GNUPG itself 
appears to be GPL without exception...Not suggesting you need to change 
the license binding but people using it (as always) need to understand 
all of the license issues that are involved.

GMGPL vs. LGPL, was: Re: ANN: Update to AdaGPGME and libgpg-error

[Tapio Kelloniemi]

Jeff C <jcreem@yahoo.com> wrote:
>One note..While I am a big fan of the GMGPL approach, it is not really
>clear that it is entirely helpful in this case since GNUPG itself
>appears to be GPL without exception...

Why do all Ada softwrae use "GMGPL" instead of Lesser General Public
License? I'm not a lawyer and probably reading the both texts would not make
me wiser at all.

-- 
Tapio

Re: GMGPL vs. LGPL, was: Re: ANN: Update to AdaGPGME and libgpg-error

[Pascal Obry]

Tapio Kelloniemi <spam17@thack.org> writes:

> Why do all Ada softwrae use "GMGPL" instead of Lesser General Public
> License? 

That's the license used by GNAT itself, certainly the most respected piece
of Ada code around :)

Pascal.

-- 

--|------------------------------------------------------
--| Pascal Obry                           Team-Ada Member
--| 45, rue Gabriel Peri - 78114 Magny Les Hameaux FRANCE
--|------------------------------------------------------
--|              http://www.obry.org
--| "The best way to travel is by means of imagination"
--|
--| gpg --keyserver wwwkeys.pgp.net --recv-key C1082595

Re: GMGPL vs. LGPL, was: Re: ANN: Update to AdaGPGME and libgpg-error

[Jeff C]

Tapio Kelloniemi wrote:
> Jeff C <jcreem@yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
>>One note..While I am a big fan of the GMGPL approach, it is not really
>>clear that it is entirely helpful in this case since GNUPG itself
>>appears to be GPL without exception...
> 
> 
> Why do all Ada softwrae use "GMGPL" instead of Lesser General Public
> License? I'm not a lawyer and probably reading the both texts would not make
> me wiser at all.
> 

First insert the old I am not a lawyer thing....but here is my 
understanding.

The problem (or at least one major problem) is that the LGPL is not 
really compatible with generic/template based programming languages.

Section 6 of the LGPL has clauses that require the things that use the 
LGPL library to either be licensed under GPL like terms OR you have to 
distribute the work so that the end user can apply bug fixes to the LGPL 
portion and continue to run. You can do this with plain old C (ignoring 
the trivial stuff like Macros and constants) by doing dynamic linking to 
the library. With C++ Templates and Ada generics you can not usually get 
away with a dynamic link to portions of the library code.

So, GMGPL essentially is another way at getting to an end state similar 
to what people *THink* the LGPL says.

Re: ANN: Update to AdaGPGME and libgpg-error

[Andreas Almroth]

Jeff C wrote:
> Andreas Almroth wrote:
> 
>> Hi all,
>>
>> For those of you interested, I have updated the Ada95 bindings to;
>>
>> * GPGME 1.0.2 (GnuPG Made Easy C API)
>> * libgpg-error 1.0 (common error message library for GnuPG components)
>>
<snip>
> 
> Nice!
> 
> One note..While I am a big fan of the GMGPL approach, it is not really 
> clear that it is entirely helpful in this case since GNUPG itself 
> appears to be GPL without exception...Not suggesting you need to change 
> the license binding but people using it (as always) need to understand 
> all of the license issues that are involved.
> 

Thanks!

Regarding the license, yes, it may not be entirely clear, I agree fully.
GnuPG is GPL only, GPGME is LGPL as its design is not limited to GnuPG, 
and in the future may include other backends that may use other 
licenses. I believe that could have been a reason why they choose LGPL.
I use GMGPL for most of my work that I publish. I like the GMGPL, it is 
an approved license, and is based on GPL with the exception that any 
code instantiating generics or using parts does not necessarily make the 
final product GPL/GMGPL. However copyrights are still in place.
GMGPL differs from LGPL, but to my understanding, not so much in reality.

In this specific scenario, it is hard to say where to draw the line, as 
GPGME, AFAIK, does not link to GnuPG, but merely calls the executable 
with the necessary arguments. AdaGPGME is then linking to GPGME and any 
resulting products would be based on LGPL, which means they can have 
other (even non-free) licenses. The GMGPL would not be in the way really.

Well, I'm not an legal eagle, but I don't see that GMGPL in any way is 
limiting/infringing LGPL.

Perhaps I should add a note to the README file...

/A

Re: ANN: Update to AdaGPGME and libgpg-error

[Marin David Condic]

I think the LGPL does not adequately cover generics. For a long time, 
Ada has been rather unique in having generics and so licenses aimed at 
things like C never really thought to cover them. Clearly, other 
languages are catching up, so the GMGPL may be more useful.

A generic is not really a callable subroutine. Its sort of vaguely 
similar to a macro expansion, but not quite the same thing. So if the 
LGPL says you can call a subroutine and that doesn't make your code 
GPL'ed, does that mean that instantiating a generic doesn't GPL your 
code? If its ambiguous at all, you're better off having a license that 
explicitly spells it out.

MDC

Andreas Almroth wrote:
> 
> Well, I'm not an legal eagle, but I don't see that GMGPL in any way is 
> limiting/infringing LGPL.
> 

-- 
======================================================================
Marin David Condic
I work for: http://www.belcan.com/
My project is: http://www.jsf.mil/NSFrames.htm

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Re: ANN: Update to AdaGPGME and libgpg-error

[Simon Wright]

Marin David Condic <nobody@noplace.com> writes:

> I think the LGPL does not adequately cover generics. For a long time,
> Ada has been rather unique in having generics and so licenses aimed at
> things like C never really thought to cover them. Clearly, other
> languages are catching up, so the GMGPL may be more useful.
> 
> A generic is not really a callable subroutine. Its sort of vaguely
> similar to a macro expansion, but not quite the same thing. So if the
> LGPL says you can call a subroutine and that doesn't make your code
> GPL'ed, does that mean that instantiating a generic doesn't GPL your
> code? If its ambiguous at all, you're better off having a license that
> explicitly spells it out.

For example, see the header comment on bison.simple:

/* As a special exception, when this file is copied by Bison into a
   Bison output file, you may use that output file without restriction.
   This special exception was added by the Free Software Foundation
   in version 1.24 of Bison.  */

I wrote the following for XSL stylesheets:

     As a special exception, when portions of this file are copied by
     a stylesheet processor into an output file, this file does not by
     itself cause the resulting file to be covered by the GNU General
     Public License.  This exception does not however invalidate any
     other reasons why the output file might be covered by the GNU
     Public License.

which was intended as 'GMGPL for stylesheets'. I suspect I was going a
bit further than really necessary ...

-- 
Simon Wright                               100% Ada, no bugs.

Re: ANN: Update to AdaGPGME and libgpg-error

[Marin David Condic]

Its important to cover these things because many people/companies have 
concerns about license infection. They want to know that if they are 
using your tools/utilities that this does not force upon them whatever 
license you personally wanted to use. Being explicit about where your 
software/rights ends and the other guy's begins is a good thing.

MDC

Simon Wright wrote:
> 
> 
> For example, see the header comment on bison.simple:
> 
> /* As a special exception, when this file is copied by Bison into a
>    Bison output file, you may use that output file without restriction.
>    This special exception was added by the Free Software Foundation
>    in version 1.24 of Bison.  */
> 
> I wrote the following for XSL stylesheets:
> 
>      As a special exception, when portions of this file are copied by
>      a stylesheet processor into an output file, this file does not by
>      itself cause the resulting file to be covered by the GNU General
>      Public License.  This exception does not however invalidate any
>      other reasons why the output file might be covered by the GNU
>      Public License.
> 
> which was intended as 'GMGPL for stylesheets'. I suspect I was going a
> bit further than really necessary ...
> 

-- 
======================================================================
Marin David Condic
I work for: http://www.belcan.com/
My project is: http://www.jsf.mil/NSFrames.htm

Send Replies To: m   o   d   c @ a   m   o   g
                    c   n   i       c   .   r

     "'Shut up,' he explained."

         --  Ring Lardner
======================================================================