Source for Win32 Pidgin IM-History Plugin

[Daniel Atallah]

On Wed, Jun 4, 2008 at 9:02 AM, Ramaz Korintelly
<ramaz.korintelly at im-history.com> wrote:
> It is the IM-History Public API library, it can be used and redistributed
> without any limitation. Actually closed source, binary for Linux is
> available as well.

Thanks for the clarification.  Unfortunately, this is a problem.

As I'm sure you're aware, Pidgin (and libpurple) are released under
the GPL, this means that all plugins must use a compatible license
(http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLAndPlugins).

I did notice that the in the Pidgin IM-History plugin source comments,
it is noted as being released under the GPL (which is a great start),
but the way that it interacts with the (incompatibly licensed)
imhproxy.dll library violates the license.  I noticed that the linux
version works in a different way (presumably to avoid this problem).
See http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLIncompatibleLibs
for a detailed description of this situation.  Basically, libpurple
would have to be relicensed to allow this type of situation (which
isn't going to be possible) because your plugin by definition uses
parts of libpurple.

There are a couple other problems (the binary installer makes no note
of the licensing that I can see, nor is the full GPL license included
with either the installer or the zip file), but these are minor and
easy to fix compared to the use of an incompatibly licensed library.

Please stop distributing the Windows version of the Pidgin plugin in
the current form.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me or send an
email to the pidgin development list (devel at pidgin.im).

Thanks,
Daniel Atallah.

> On 6/4/08, Daniel Atallah <datallah at pidgin.im> wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, Jun 4, 2008 at 3:42 AM, Ramaz Korintelly
>> <ramaz.korintelly at im-history.com> wrote:
>> > Hi Daniel!
>> >
>> > Please find the source inside the package:
>> > http://www.im-history.com/download/IMHistoryPidgin.zip
>>
>> Thanks for the link, Ramaz.
>>
>> I downloaded the zip file and found the source for the plugin.
>>
>> It appears to link indirectly to imhproxy.dll; what is the license for
>> that dll and is the source available?
>>
>> Thanks again,
>> Daniel