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I think I have a possible sollution for this.
IIRC, libguile links in libreadline because the REPL uses
readline, right?
But IMHO, any application which uses the REPL is enought based
on Guile (not _lib_guile!) to make it in our interest to
"infect" it with the GPL (did anyone realize that with a few
lines of code I could produce a "myguile" interpreter, in all
ways identical to Guile but with some proprietary license?
Except for the fact that readline gets linked too, of course).
And of course, most applications will _not_ use the REPL (those
that want Guile as an extension language), so it also configures
unnecessary bloat.
I think the sollution here is to rip the REPL (and anything that
uses readline) off from libguile into a new (GPLed) library -
say, libguile-repl. Then guile-config may gain an argument
"--with-repl"; with this argument, it links libguile-repl and
libreadline, without it it doesn't.
We get the desired effect; applications wishing to use Guile as
an extension language don't have to be GPLed, but modified Guile
interpreters do.
Of course this _could_ break existing software, but this is what
sonames are for :-)
On Feb 15, Richard Stallman decided to present us with:
>
> Jim has since added a configure-time option to not link Guile
> against libreadline.
>
> This does not really solve the problem. If a sysadmin installs Guile
> without using that option, the installation of Guile on that machine
> would still lead users to do something that violates our own
> distribution terms, without even knowing they are doing so.
>
> The only real solution is that Guile must not cause readline to be
> linked in. There should not be an option in Guile for sysadmins to
> cause this to happen to users.
>
> It would be ok for Guile to be set up so that it can use readline if
> *the user* chooses to link it into the programx. This would not
> put us in the position of leading people to violate the Readline
> distribution terms. This perhaps could be done by including a weak
> link to a symbol in libreadline.a.
[]s,
|alo
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