Re: [boost] Can a Boost library use a component like GMP and mfpr that have a LGPL license ?

Subject: Re: [boost] Can a Boost library use a component like GMP and mfpr that have a LGPL license ?
From: Stefan Seefeld (seefeld_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-03-20 18:46:01

Eric Niebler wrote:
> Stefan Seefeld wrote:
>> Paul A. Bristow wrote:
>>> Might we enter into discussion with GMP and mfpr developers to get 
>>> explicit
>>> permission to package their library within Boost?
>>>   
>>
>> Is there any reason to require boost to be self-contained ? Why can't 
>> it depend on external libraries for some cases, especially if those 
>> libraries are already freely available and hugely popular, thus the 
>> chances that they are already present are high.
>> I agree that it would be good not to expose this dependency through 
>> the API, though, so if it got replaced, API compatibility would be 
>> maintainable.
>
> You mean, the way Boost.Regex can be configured to use IBM's ICU 
> library for handling Unicode? And Boost.Python requires Python?
>
Yes, there are certainly lots of examples of external dependencies. 
Another example is my boost.xml sandbox project, which (right now) 
depends on libxml2, and we had long discussions in the past whether that 
was a good idea or not. The overall agreement was that it was, as long 
as it could be replaced by other 'back-ends' without affecting the API. 
That's what I was alluding to in my comments above.

Regards,
       Stefan

-- 
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