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From: Tollef Fog Heen <tfheen@err.no>
To: dev@apr.apache.org,  legal@apache.org
Subject: Re: apr-util - "missing" file is GPL licensed
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Date: Thu, 04 Feb 2010 22:03:35 +0100
In-Reply-To: <20100204162759.2d80f1b9@baldur> (Nick Kew's message of "Thu, 4
	Feb 2010 16:27:59 +0000")
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]] Nick Kew 

| I don't know if it comes under any of the FSF's exceptions for the
| core toolchain (as in, compiling with gcc and linking glibc doesn't
| bring you under GPL).

It's a shell script.  It's hardly linked into expat or apr-util and
there's no way it can make the generated binaries fall under the GPL.

Its purpose is:

  Handle \`PROGRAM [ARGUMENT]...' for when PROGRAM is missing, or return
  an error status if there is no known handling for PROGRAM.

it does this for:

Supported PROGRAM values:
  aclocal      touch file \`aclocal.m4'
  autoconf     touch file \`configure'
  autoheader   touch file \`config.h.in'
  automake     touch all \`Makefile.in' files
  bison        create \`y.tab.[ch]', if possible, from existing .[ch]
  flex         create \`lex.yy.c', if possible, from existing .c
  lex          create \`lex.yy.c', if possible, from existing .c
  makeinfo     touch the output file
  yacc         create \`y.tab.[ch]', if possible, from existing .[ch]

It's part of the suite of scripts automake installs in the source
directory.

| From an APR point of view, I've long argued that we should
| stop bundling third-party libraries that would be better
| treated as dependencies.  We may now have yet another reason
| to do so!

This is something I can agree with, but not for licencing reasons.

| FWIW, it should also be straightforward to remove the file
| and (at worst) substitute stubs for anything that's required.
| The worst it'll do is make the build less robust against
| an incomplete toolchain.

Indeed.

-- 
Tollef Fog Heen
UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are