Hi Chris, > You are correct, you are completely at liberty to choose any license you > like for your software, and I respect that. However, if you do choose to > release your software under GPL or LGPL you also place yourself under an > obligation to provide build instructions. This is not what I say, it is > what the GPL/LGPL themselves say. I recommend to you "A Practical Guide > to GPL Compliance" published by the Software Freedom Law Center: > > http://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2008/compliance-guide.html > > Particularly section 4.2.2 Building the Sources: > > "You must provide all information necessary such that someone generally > skilled with computer systems could produce a binary similar to the one > provided." "Most importantly, you must provide some sort of roadmap that > allows technically sophisticated users to build your software."
Thank you for pointing this out. Seriously. On the other hand the project uses standardized gnu autotools/gcc to build. Sorry, but unfortunately we don't have enough resources to maintain a documentation that goes on in details with the exact commands about how to build it on every platform, listing the exact dependencies. There are new releases of the supported platforms every day. If a new version of a dependency comes with this newly released OS version and breaks the build, then I would be liable to be not adhering to the GPL/LGPL terms because I have not provided build instructions for that specific environment. If you look deeper, there are even packaging scripts which help not only compile but build a binary package for various platforms. Note that there are thousands of open source projects licensed under the GPL/LGPL which not only don't provide packaging scripts but also fail to build correctly on most platforms which they claim to support. > So my understanding is that either you should provide build instructions > for Windows, or you should release the Windows binary under a different > license. > The choice is yours and I respect it. Thank you for your advice. This issue has been in the air recently, see my next email. > Both I personally, and ViaSat as a company, take very seriously our > obligations to comply fully with software licenses, and we do not knowingly > violate them. > The GPL and LGPL place us under an obligation to make our modifications > available, under the same license, to those we distribute the modified > software to. This is the tricky part of the GPL/LGPL, which you have exactly said here: you are only required to make the modifications available to those who you distribute the software to but you are not required to contribute anything back to the project. The current license allows that. This shall be fixed. Thanks for pointing it out. > I didn't come here the first time demanding build instructions, I took the > hints you gave and spent several hours trying to figure it out for myself. I certainly understand your frustration, as windows is the platform which isn't my favorite either. On the other hand you seem to have enough experience to be able to figure out what is causing the compile error. We have several windows machines where nxlog can build successfully in an msys environment. It's possible that something has changed meanwhile in the dependencies, in msys or in mingw that causes the build to fail and it is also possible that I or somebody else tweaked the build environment , but I can't recall seeing the exact error you are having. Believe it or not, I'd like to help you. Unfortunately it would require a substantial amount of time to set up a fresh windows and start installing build dependencies from scratch to be able to reproduce the build problem you are having. And all this just to support YOU on my free time for free, where YOU is a company "Surpassing 2,700 Employees and $1 Billion in Sales" which is probably interested in selling a modified version of nxlog to customers and only making available the source code to those customers only. Instead of spending a half day with your problem by playing charity for YOU, I'd rather choose to spend time with my real job working with paying customers to earn a living, play with my children, sleep, whatever. Thank you for your understanding and please read my next email to help understand the situation better. Sorry if I couldn't meet your expectations. Regards, Botond ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ October Webinars: Code for Performance Free Intel webinars can help you accelerate application performance. Explore tips for MPI, OpenMP, advanced profiling, and more. Get the most from the latest Intel processors and coprocessors. See abstracts and register > http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=60134791&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk _______________________________________________ nxlog-ce-users mailing list nxlog-ce-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/nxlog-ce-users
