[Box Backup] GNU readline licence issue

[Martin Ebourne]

Hi,

>From something mentioned on another list I've found that GNU readline is
licensed under the GPL, not the LGPL as you might have expected:

http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/php/chet/readline/rltop.html

This would appear to cause problems with linking against Box Backup because
box is using the original BSD licence, which is considered to be an
incompatible licence by the FSF. There is a modified BSD licence which is
considered compatible, which would be one way of resolving this:

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#GPLCompatibleLicenses
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.html

Another way would be to use an alternative to GNU readline. libedit would
appear to be a possibility which is used in the BSD world (NetBSD
especially). I've not seen it used in the linux world though.

Cheers,

Martin.