[poppler] GPL & code commits (was Alternate Patch for CharCodeToUnicode.cc)

[Jonathan Blandford]

On Sun, 2006-01-22 at 11:32 -0800, Leonard Rosenthol wrote:
> At 03:45 PM 1/21/2006, Albert Astals Cid wrote:

> > >          So using the first example, since Poppler is/will be
> > > shipping as part of Red Hat - are you suggesting that the Red Hat
> > > folks are not allowed to include your code with their distribution?
> >No, they can include poppler as they are not relicensing it.
> 
>          But they are....
> 
>          You can purchase a commercial license 
> for RH - which, I assume, would include Poppler...

That's not how Red Hat's business works.  You don't buy a license to use
the software for RHEL, you purchase support for the software collection.
xpdf on RHEL is available under the GPL, as it is with every other Linux
distro.  xpdf's copyright is still held by "Glyph & Cog, LLC."  We don't
have the rights to offer it under any other terms.

And that is what Albert is (correctly) worried about.  All the code
we're writing for poppler is available under the GPL.  Derek is well
within his rights to reincorporate that code into the main xpdf code
base.  However, once he does that, he cannot make that code available
under any other terms than the GPL.  

I was under the impression that Derek intends to dual license xpdf, and
that's why he needs assignment of copyright.  That's why code from
poppler (available only under the GPL) is not used by him.  

On the other hand, if he's only making this code available under the
terms of the GPL, then by all means, we should make sure the code bases
are merged or stay close together.  

> > >          And what is to prevent me from writing a Poppler-based
> > > application and selling it - provided that I put the sources on the
> > > disk and/or provide a link?
> >Nothing, but remember you must not only provide the poppler sources but ALSO
> >your application sources.
> 
>          Depends on how I use Poppler (direct 
> link vs. calling out) - but yes, it's a possibility.

Poppler (and XPDF) is GPL, not LGPL.  As a result, applications linking
to them have to release their code.

Thanks,
-Jonathan
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