Subject: Re: bug#55083: [PATCH 1/2] gnu: add python-librouteros

From: Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 May 2022 18:08:49 +0200

On Mon, 23 May 2022 15:19:16 +0200
Ludovic Courtès <[email-masked]> wrote:

> Hi Denis,
Hi,

> Did you have a chance to address Maxime’s comments?
> 
> Seems like little is missing to get those patches applied.
I could do that but we can only merge python-librouteros.

python-librouteros doesn't want to change license so only bundlewrap
can fix that licensing issue.

I've reported the bug upstream[1], and as there is a CLA, a single
entity (here a company) owns all the copyright, and they don't want to
re-license as GPLv2 or GPLv2-or-later, so as I understand the only
options left are:
- to somehow remove the python-librouteros dependency completely
- to add an exception to link it to GPLv2 code

As for the later the project expressed some doubts on if it's really
possible or not:
> Hm. Are you sure it's possible for me to "allow" BundleWrap to be
> linked against GPLv2 libs? Wouldn't that require the permission of
> the lib, rather than BundleWrap?

And so far I found the following information on the topic but nothing
really conclusive yet:
- https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#v2v3Compatibility
- https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLIncompatibleLibs

And here the issue mentioned in the first link is the GPLv2 section 6
which has:
> [...]
> You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients'
> exercise of the rights granted herein.
> [...]

So here I'm not sure anymore if there is a way to somehow satisfy
the GPLv2 of the library just with an exception in bundlewrap.

I'm also very interested in understanding that issue better as I've
written software (were I still own all the copyright) that has somewhat
similar requirements (I want to release it under GPLv2 or later (to
be able to be merged upstream) with an exception for linking against
Apache libraries).

References:
-----------
[1]https://github.com/bundlewrap/bundlewrap/issues/709

Denis.