[Gpg4win-devel] Some questions re: translation of manual

[Marcus Brinkmann]

At Wed, 25 Oct 2006 11:22:42 +0530,
"Vineet Madan" <vineet1408 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> dear bernhard
> 
> i asked werner but he  didn't reply. i am about to complete a new frntend
> for gpg. i want to put it or user feed back. what policy, licence should i
> set in it so that i get the needfull acknowledgement and feedback,,,,

It would help to know which license you intended to use.  If you
license your software under the GPL v2 or later, which I recommend,
then you ensure maximum compatibility.  Incompatible licenses coupled
with tight integration can enter a legal grey area.

To usefully answer the license question, one also has to know the
license of all components you are using in your software, especially
the libraries you are using.

Let's assume the best case scenario: All the software you are using is
GPL'ed or under a license compatible to the GPL (see
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#GPLCompatibleLicenses
for an extensive list).  In that case, the standard procedure is to
have a copyright notice in each file of your sources, stating the
originator of all parties that have contributed to the content of that
particular file and a license notice for each contribution.  I
recommend to have a list of all projects and licenses used directly in
your source code in a file README at the top level directory, and a
file COPYING with a copy of the full license texts.  You can find more
detailed information at
http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/maintain.html#Copyright-Notices

This is for source code you are actually including in your program.
For libraries and other components used (like gpg), normally no notice
is provided, so no particular action is necessary, although you should
ensure that the licenses are in fact compatible.  As you do this check
anyway, I'd recommend to include a list of all dependencies and their
license type in the README, like this:

"This program has the following dependencies:

libreadline 5.1 (GPL)
libfoobar 0.2 (LGPL) http://www.foobar.org/"

This is generally useful information for people who want to build and
package your software, so I think it's a good idea to include it.  For
example, if your software will be included in Debian, the Debian
maintainer will have to do a license check, and this information will
speed up the process considerably.

I hope this information is helpful.  If any doubts remain, please just
ask.  In general, I think it's a good idea to just look at how it is
done in high-profile software packages, such as GNU Emacs or GNU
shellutils or other packages like that.

Thanks,
Marcus