Would a relicense to a more permissive license be possible?

[8bitprodigy]

Howdy! I'm currently working on a fork of JWM, and one of the features I'd like to add is support for global menus in the panel (JWM calls it a "tray"). However, one of my design goals for the project is to keep all code used in it under a permissive license, and this appears to be the best or only library that can add this sort of feature that doesn't depend on a UI toolkit library (at least, not that I could find), but it's GPL. So I was wondering if you'd be willing to relicense it under a more permissive license. I think doing so might drum up a bit more interest in it, so maybe more people would be willing to help develop and use it, and maybe they'd be interested in using it in their own Louvre-based WMs ;)

[ehopperdietzel]

Hi, this project is incomplete. The only missing components are action events such as clicking and hovering over menu items (if I remember correctly). It doesn't render menus itself; instead, it provides three APIs: one for apps, another for compositors/servers, and a third for the actual global menu. The purpose of these APIs is to share and organize the menus data and structure in a simple way. The global menu app is responsible for rendering the menus as it wishes.

Feel free to use any of my projects, I'll eventually change the license to MIT if I decide to continue it.

[ehopperdietzel]

Also, I think DBusMenu is the way to go.

[8bitprodigy]

It doesn't render menus itself; instead, it provides three APIs: one for apps, another for compositors/servers, and a third for the actual global menu. The purpose of these APIs is to share and organize the menus data and structure in a simple way. The global menu app is responsible for rendering the menus as it wishes.

That's fine, as JWM has its own menu system built in, so that would actually be great for my project.

Feel free to use any of my projects, I'll eventually change the license to MIT if I decide to continue it.

Well, I could test it out, but it won't make it in officially until such a relicense happens. If possible, would I be able to get permission use it under a permissive license if you don't want to relicense it outright?

Also, I think DBusMenu is the way to go.

Unfortunately, that uses copyleft code, and would not fit in with my project :\

[ehopperdietzel]

Well, I could test it out, but it won't make it in officially until such a relicense happens. If possible, would I be able to get permission use it under a permissive license if you don't want to relicense it outright?

Sure, no problem.

Unfortunately, that uses copyleft code, and would not fit in with my project :\

Isn't that just a DBus interface?

[8bitprodigy]

Sure, no problem.

Fantastic! What license can I use it under? MIT?

Isn't that just a DBus interface?

I mean, I found a library called "libDBusMenu" that's LGPL, unless you meant just the protocol itself.

[8bitprodigy]

I'm assuming the thumbs up means MIT is acceptable.

[ehopperdietzel]

Sorry, yes MIT is ok.

[8bitprodigy]

Fantastic! Thank you so much!

[8bitprodigy]

Unfortunately, it doesn't build on FreeBSD, as it uses Linux-specific libraries. I may have to write my own compatibility headers to wrap kqueue with the epoll API.

[ehopperdietzel]

Oh :( I probably used epoll to provide a single pollable fd to the user API, if you don't need that I guess it could be replaced with poll or similar.

[8bitprodigy]

Oh :( I probably used epoll to provide a single pollable fd to the user API, if you don't need that I guess it could be replaced with poll or similar.

Thanks for the tip, I'll look into it! If it doesn't work, I may use whatever code manages to do the global menu thing from MLVWM.