CUPS Arabic support ?

[Michael Sweet]

Ahmad Khalifa wrote:
> 
> 
> Michael Sweet wrote:
> 
>> It is not a technical issue, but a legal one.  Any core code in
>> CUPS MUST be owned by us or available under an unrestrictive license
>> (i.e. BSD-style) since we relicense the code under other licenses
>> (such as the one that Apple uses, although there are other companies
>> licensing the code as well)
>>
>> Also, depending on an ALPHA-quality piece of software
>> for a core part of CUPS printing is also something we do not want to
>> do.
>>
>> In short, in order for us to accept your patch, it must be
>> unencumbered and not depend upon a third-party library that cannot
>> be included in the CUPS source code.
> 
> 
> ok, what about LGPL ?
> you can do whatever you want with it.

Not exactly.  There is an implied requirement that in order to
comply with the LGPL you need to link dynamically to the library
or provide source.  Also, you can't re-license the code under
different terms, which is a requirement for us for any core code
that we use - the licensee might be shipping on an embedded
platform where source and shared libaries are simply not possible.

> here is what FriBidi's author had to say..
> 
> behdad esfahbod wrote:
> Since FriBidi is LGPLed, there should be absolutely no problem
> with relicensing CUPS.  That's why FriBidi is LGPLed.
> Technically, even Microsoft can ship FriBidi in Windows with no
> licensing problem as long as they don't touch the code.  Even if
> they touch the code, all they need to do is to give the modified
> source code of FriBidi too, but nothing else.

That's not our interpretation - shared libraries/DLLs allow for
this, but as long as there is no statement allowing for static
linking (such as that provided by FLTK - http://www.fltk.org/)
you can't link it statically without providing source, and that
makes it impossible for us to use it for a core part of CUPS.

-- 
______________________________________________________________________
Michael Sweet, Easy Software Products           mike at easysw dot com
Printing Software for UNIX                       http://www.easysw.com