License confusion of exempi-2.1.1/m4/boost.m4

[Li, Yan]

Dear Exempi Developers,

First let me thank you for bringing such a great project to us. I am
facing a license confusion when reading the Exempi code and hope you
can help to clarify it.

While looking into Exempi's 2.1.1 release, which is supposed to be the
latest one according to the project website, I found file
exempi-2.1.1/m4/boost.m4 [1] is under GPLv3+ license. This has
effectively rendered the whole license of exempi unclear since we can
not just redistribute that GPLv3+ licensed file in the same way that
we follow the BSD license, which is adopted by Exempi.

According to my understanding that "boost.m4" is from here [2]. The
author of it has stated, in that version recited above, an additional
clause to GPLv3 that "If you convey this file as part of a work that
contains a configuration script generated by Autoconf, you may do so
under terms of your choice." But this clause can not be found in the
"boost.m4" shipping in Exempi. The author of "boost.m4" also stated
that "The intent here is to keep the code Free but to allow anyone to
*use* it." [3] Hence I think his intention was not to limit the
adoption of "boost.m4" within the restriction of GPLv3. I guess that
new clause was missing when Exempi pulled in an earlier version and it
was only added later.

To help to put the state clear, could you please consider
incorporating the missing clause into the "boost.m4" shipping in the
Exempi therefore we can redistribute Exempi following the BSD license
without the burden of supporting one GPLv3+ licensed file in it?

Thank you very much.

Ref:
[1] http://cgit.freedesktop.org/exempi/tree/m4/boost.m4
[2] http://github.com/tsuna/boost.m4/blob/master/build-aux/boost.m4
[3] http://github.com/tsuna/boost.m4

-- 
Best regards,
Li, Yan

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