[PATCH libevdev 1/2] Test for CFLAGS/LFLAGS availability

[David Herrmann]

Hi

On Fri, Sep 13, 2013 at 12:21 AM, Ran Benita <ran234 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Thu, Sep 12, 2013 at 06:07:53PM +0200, David Herrmann wrote:
>> diff --git a/m4/attributes.m4 b/m4/attributes.m4
>> new file mode 100644
>> index 0000000..7e080da
>> --- /dev/null
>> +++ b/m4/attributes.m4
>> @@ -0,0 +1,288 @@
>> +dnl Macros to check the presence of generic (non-typed) symbols.
>> +dnl Copyright (c) 2006-2008 Diego Pettenň <flameeyes at gmail.com>
>> +dnl Copyright (c) 2006-2008 xine project
>> +dnl Copyright (c) 2012 Lucas De Marchi <lucas.de.marchi at gmail.com>
>> +dnl
>> +dnl This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
>> +dnl it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
>> +dnl the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option)
>> +dnl any later version.
>> +dnl
>> +dnl This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
>> +dnl but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
>> +dnl MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
>> +dnl GNU General Public License for more details.
>> +dnl
>> +dnl You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
>> +dnl along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
>> +dnl Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA
>> +dnl 02110-1301, USA.
>> +dnl
>> +dnl As a special exception, the copyright owners of the
>> +dnl macro gives unlimited permission to copy, distribute and modify the
>> +dnl configure scripts that are the output of Autoconf when processing the
>> +dnl Macro. You need not follow the terms of the GNU General Public
>> +dnl License when using or distributing such scripts, even though portions
>> +dnl of the text of the Macro appear in them. The GNU General Public
>> +dnl License (GPL) does govern all other use of the material that
>> +dnl constitutes the Autoconf Macro.
>> +dnl
>> +dnl This special exception to the GPL applies to versions of the
>> +dnl Autoconf Macro released by this project. When you make and
>> +dnl distribute a modified version of the Autoconf Macro, you may extend
>> +dnl this special exception to the GPL to apply to your modified version as
>> +dnl well.
>
> Annoying question follows:
>
> Is this license a problem in an MIT-licensed project? AFAIU including
> the file itself is GPL. It had put me off using several macros in the
> past (it seems to be the standard for such), but I am not well-versed
> in this stuff...

I don't think so. Obviously, the license states that we are allowed to
distribute tarballs in any form, so I doubt it wouldn't apply to
git-copies either. If Peter is hesitating, we can always contact the
developers, Peter?

On the other hand, we are free to redistribute the m4 script as GPL
script. Nothing states that we have to make libevdev GPL as well.
There is no connection between the m4 script and libevdev except for
the output of automake, which is explicitly allowed as _any_ license
we want.

Comments?
David