Hello Matt

As far as binding the users to the GPL, who cares? Besides, they would

only be bound to it if they develop with QT. If they don't like the GPL then they can either make a new lib for it that isn't bound under GPL -or- they can simply use GTK.

I've written an answer to your question because I care about that. The first answer was short but you know what it is. Suddenly you realize you wrote more than 50 lines. So instead of using hard disk of others I've built a simple HTML page with the answer. It explains why I'm not for a systematic use of the GPL. Feel free to comment. Maybe here even if it is not maybe the better place. Moderators ?

About licenses : http://www.tekool.com/droit/aboutlicenses.htm

Have a nice day

Christophe

PS : I'm french so my english is bad.

I have read the text; While I don't necessarily agree with all the details, Let me just point out that the RTL of free pascal is a MODIFIED LGPL, which explicitly allows using it in closed source projects, i.e. the RTL is open source, but programs that are constructed with it do not need to be open source.

We choose for this because we also feel that disallowing closed source is too restrictive; it is a restriction of freedom, which is so propagated by GPL.

Michael.

Hello

I have read the text; While I don't necessarily agree with all the details,

Feel free to send me comments. I will modify if need.

We choose for this because we also feel that disallowing closed source is too restrictive; it is a restriction of freedom, which is so propagated by GPL.

Great :-) I was asking me what was the exact license of Free Pascal. I've not understood
everything in the COPYING file and in the docs. Have you got some links ?

Christophe

Christophe wrote

Great :-) I was asking me what was the exact license of Free Pascal. I've not understood everything in the COPYING file and in the docs. Have you got some links ?

Overview over OpenSource licenses:
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/

GPL in french:
http://www.april.org/gnu/gpl_french.html

Thanks Andreas but I was speaking of pointers in FPC documentation.

Have a nice day

Christophe

Basically, all RTL sources refer to a file COPYING.FPC. This file states that the RTL Files are under LGPL license as described in COPYING (this is simply the LGPL) with the exception that the RTL can be linked to commercial apps or libs.

Michael.

Hello Michael,

It's a really nice choice. Compiler licenses are very important to promote a language.

About our discussion about Sablopas I'm happy to mention the fact that it now compiles dynamically with FPC under Linux. I must use the -k switch with providing the full filename because {$LINKLIB sablot} fails but everything is fine. The demo is now 200K and the Kylix one 164Ko. I will provide soon the 0.5.1 in a tarball.

Thanks for your tip. I've got all the so files but it makes me re-check in the doc all the conditions need for linking a lib. That's where I've tried again the k switch.

A small question : How can I do to declare "sablot" and use {$LINKLIB sablot} as I'm doing {$LINKLIB expat} ?

Cheers,

Christophe

Quoting Christophe :

About our discussion about Sablopas I'm happy to mention the fact that it now compiles dynamically with FPC under Linux. I must use the -k switch with providing the full filename because {$LINKLIB sablot} fails but everything is fine.

Have you tried using the named 'external' directive? This is the one I tend to go for because it makes you explicitly define which library you mean.

e.g.

rather than {$linklib whatever} you can use:

 {both link to lib 'whatever'}
 procedure myroutine(param1: pointer); cdecl; external 'whatever';
 function myroutine2: integer; cdecl; external 'whatever';
 {links to lib 'alternate'}
 function myotherroutine(value: integer): boolean; cdecl; external 'alternate';

I found this method to work a whole lot more reliably than the linklib compiler directive in 1.00 and have used it ever since. I also come from a Delphi background where the named external directive is the normal way of working.

Hope that helps,

Matt