With your permission I CC this message to the list: On Wed, 16 May 2001, Gregor Hoffleit wrote:

I think Hannu has some point here (even if he doesn't completely understand the situation ;-):

I agree, and I'm sorry that my intentions have been misunderstood, you should be able to read my explanations in zope@zope.org in a few minutes.

According to http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html, the ZPL is incompatible with the GPL. I.e. if I license your zshell and jaxml stuff according to the terms of the GPL, you don't give me permission to link the stuff with ZPL stuff--at least in the interpretation of the FSF, which seems to consider even running scripts as a special kind of linking...

IMHO this is an error from the FSF, and being a fanatic GPL defenser like I am, it's hard for me to write this. I repeat my point here: you can download any GPLed software sources, compile it with a proprietary compiler, use it under a proprietary operating system, and all is allowed, except that if you redistribute the software even along with the compiler and operating system, the software's license must be GPL, while the compiler's and operating system's ones remain "proprietary" because the software isn't in any way a part of either the compiler or the operating system in itself. Then, following this (my) reasoning, you can download my GPLed code and install it to run it from Zope without any restriction, provided you redistribute my code under the GPL and you don't use parts of my code from your own code: just click on the "Test" tab for my external method and it's ok for me (and probably not for the FSF): my code isn't any part of either Zope's code nor your own software's code. But if you copy parts of my code to include it in your own code or inside Zope's core, then the GPL applies.

I.e. with the current license terms of jaxml and zshell, I can't be sure that you won't sue me for using this stuff with Zope.

I understand your point, but what would be the reason to publish GPLed code if nobody can use it ? Of course you're welcome to use it with Zope !

In order to work around this problem, you could add a special exception clause to the licenses, something that explicitely allows linking with Zope.

Yes, that's a good idea and I'll add something like this.

I was informed that DC is thinking about changing to Zope license to something that's compatible with the GPL. Perhaps you could help me lobbying them that this is indeed necessary and important.

No problem: Hey DC Folks ! Just do it ! Please GPL Zope right now ! IMHO, GPLing Zope shouldn't force anyone to release its code under the GPL: after all, compiling a proprietary software with a GPLed compiler (gcc) is perfectly allowed, so why should this be different with Zope ? ;-) bye, Jerome Alet