IANAL I think that it would be possible to say something like: While hwloc is BSD licensed, it may potentially link to libraries with more restrictive license terms.
However, that is more or less true of ANY software. For instance, if I compile some BSD licensed software on AIX with '-static' then IBM's libc ends up in my binary. I am not saying that IBM's libc poses any specific issues, just using it as an example. So, this is in no way a unique situation for hwloc. I think that if hwloc were to explicitly list libpci then we start a dangerous precedent under which users may expect us to continuously "audit" the libs used on various systems. -Paul On Tue, Feb 5, 2013 at 1:50 PM, Jeff Squyres (jsquyres) <jsquy...@cisco.com>wrote: > It was just pointed out to me that libpci is licensed under the GPL (not > the LGPL). > > Hence, even though hwloc is BSD, if it links to libpci.*, it's tainted. > > IANAL, this is not legal advice, yadda yadda yadda. But does this jive > with other peoples' understanding? > > This has caused a problem for an unnamed vendor who wanted to ship a > binary tool that linked against libhwloc (that linked against libpci). > Yoinks. > > The complaint to me was that hwloc needs to be clearer about this in its > documentation. > > Does this sound right? > > -- > Jeff Squyres > jsquy...@cisco.com > For corporate legal information go to: > http://www.cisco.com/web/about/doing_business/legal/cri/ > > > _______________________________________________ > hwloc-devel mailing list > hwloc-de...@open-mpi.org > http://www.open-mpi.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/hwloc-devel > -- Paul H. Hargrove phhargr...@lbl.gov Future Technologies Group Computer and Data Sciences Department Tel: +1-510-495-2352 Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Fax: +1-510-486-6900
