A few comments

[Ethan Blanton]

Eion, I tried several times to send this to you, but your mail server
is sufficiently broken that I do not believe I succeeded.  Here goes
to the list.

Eion Robb spake unto us the following wisdom:
> Ethan, you seem to combine "communicating with a library" with "linking to  
> a library", which I would call two vastly different things.  After all,  
> you would not call communication with a server "linking to a server".  
> Otherwise we wouldn't be able to "link" with the MSN servers.  Rr are you  
> saying I'm using ld.so? (which I'm not)  I'm still confused on your  
> point... it seems to be some obscure exception to me.  I still see direct  
> parallelism with any other protocol: making OS calls to communicate with a  
> server.  Maybe you can explain with a different example?

I am saying that the *particular* communication going on here is
equivalent to linking.

Let me ask you this -- if I wrote an ld.so implementation which
proxied every single function call to an external library across a TCP
socket, such that every library in the application ran in separate
address space (this is very hard, if not impossible for C; however,
it is certainly feasible with any number of languages), would you
consider that linking?  I think the answer is clearly "yes", because
the separation is, from the point of view of the progrmamer, purely
academic.  I consider that the case here, too.  What you *really* have
is an API/ABI which just *coincidentally* happens to involve network
communication.  To claim that ld.so linking of ELF shared libraries in
the same process is the only way that "linking" can be done is to
ignore huge amounts of work on remote method invocations, distributed
objects, late-bound scripting languages, and what-have-you.

> There seems to be a difference of opinion between Evan and Ethan here.  It  
> would be good to get some consensus, though that may be tricky in a  
> community-based project, or at least to hear some opinions of others on  
> the list.
> 
> I'm quite happy keeping this plugin as a plugin, I'm just not happy with  
> having to deal with all this legal stuff.  Are the EFF approachable?   
> Would it be a good idea to ask them for an opinion?

And I am not happy with this obvious circumvention of the intent of
the GPL.  As long as no one is happy...  :-P

I have said my piece here; in the end, you are the one who has to make
the decision of whether or not you wish to circumvent the GPL, violate
the GPL, proceed in opposition to the wishes of at least some of the
Pidgin development team and community, etc., as you understand the
situation and see fit.  I sense that you are either not understanding
or not buying my arguments, so I see no reason to continue to repeat
them.  I am *not* a license lawyer, and do not wish to be; I am not
comfortable with what you are doing, and rather it would not continue.
The rest of the community can weigh in as they see fit.  If it is
consensus that what you are doing is shady, illegal, or immoral, I
would appreciate if it went on outside of the greater Pidgin
community.

Ethan

-- 
The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws [that have no remedy
for evils].  They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor
determined to commit crimes.
		-- Cesare Beccaria, "On Crimes and Punishments", 1764
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