[Openal-devel] Compilation error

[Prakash Punnoor]

*Sigh*, my inbox is getting flooded. ;-) So, I hope it won't be seen as 
disrespect that I won't reply to all the posts, as I see no point and this 
will be my last post regarding this subject. It is not about me trying to 
convince others that I may be right. It simply isn't important what I or 
anyone else on this list thinks, as we are no lawyers. And lawyers at times 
have "interesting" ways to interpret a license, or what is "coded" into 
it. ;-)

I simply want to point out that dlopening GPL libs gives uncertainity (esp as 
the GPL guys give an interpretation themselves which seems to claim that this 
might be not allowed) to OpenAL's license, which I think is worse than the 
benefit of having features by loading such libs. Eg. commercial vendors 
probably want rather license certainty than features (or why do companies eg 
pay SCO linux licenses "just to be sure"?). So they would probably compile/ 
ship OpenAL w/o the GPL lib dlopen code - if they still find OpenAL 
attractive. As such, we could make their lifes easier by providing a 
configure switch --disable-dlopen-GPL-libs. But then the connected features 
may be highly volatile as they won't be used "to be sure". And then what is 
the point?

I personally don't give much of a damn, whether libmad dlopening is introduced 
or not. But I hope that I made my point clear that it may come for a price of 
possibly weakening the clear OpenAL LGPL license, which could reduce OpenAL's 
attractiveness for closed-sourced projects.

-- 
(°=                 =°)
//\ Prakash Punnoor /\\
V_/                 \_V
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