[=X=]

Originally Posted by Japher

I still don't see a problem. The poppler license is predicated on xpdf's license. The way it reads, the REASON that poppler is licensed this way is because it must follow the Xpdf license. In fact, they go so far as to say that one should contact Glyph and Cog if you want to put the code into a closed source product. The link I posted shows that Glyph and Cog have given permission.

What I underlined above is the curx of the whole licensing problem.

What you need to understand is free(as in beer) does not equal GPL . Because PDFLRF does not provide the code and only binaries it is considered a "closed source product", the author has chosen not to make it open source. Just because he does not charge for the software does not make him a GPL product

For a developer to use a third party software that is under the GPL v2 license a programmer must make his source GPL as well. This is what the author meant by "pervasive" (refer to your original quote). Mind you, this is by design.

The FSF foundation realized this was a limitation with open source since folks who wanted to keep their source closed are FORCED to open their source. So GPL v3 (also referred to as LGPL) was created to give folks the option to use a GPL product without being forced into a GPL model.

What Xpdf has given permission is to distribute xpdf via by source or executable. What they have NOT given permission is for somebody to include their code in somebody's else executable.

Originally Posted by Japher

If this is not enough, tell me who you need an email from. I'll contact an author or project maintainer myself and get a release.

It would be awesome if you can get Glyph and Cog to give special permission to PDFLRF you would be doing the mobiread community a service. The contact info can be found on the poppler web site.

Originally Posted by Japher

I think that it's pretty clear that ALL of the licenses involved from xpdf to poppler to pdflrfwin indend for free non-comercial (even closed source) use. I don't like seeing one guy who can't get his way whine and try to ruin things for everyone.

Just for clarification, we're agreed that pdflrfwin is in compliance with the Glyph and Cog license so poppler is the only issue, yes?

No we are not in agreement. What you need to understand is the intent of GPL is not so much to make the software "free" as in beer for the end user, but to make the source "free" as in liberated for everyone. For more than you care to know refer to GNU or in particular an article written by the father of FSF (Why Open source misses the point of "Free Software")