[gnu-prog-discuss] lzip vs. xz

[Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos]

On 04/19/2012 11:18 PM, Ludovic Courtès wrote:


>>>>>> The other was that the code was GPLv2-only
>>>>> It’s no longer the case.
>>>> But still it is GPLv2 and gnutls is LGPL.
>>> In the past GnuTLS-Extra existed precisely for this situation.
>>
>> Yes, but it no longer exists and I don't think it is a good idea to
>> move back to the dual library approach. Since faster algorithms than
>> LZO exist with more suitable licenses we might consider adding one of
>> those.
> 
> What compressor do you have in mind?  I guess the main criterion here is
> latency.


LZ4, at http://code.google.com/p/lz4/, although I have not tested it
a all, I'd be interested to see its interaction with TLS. The code looks
x86-centric though.

> FWIW, I find GPLv2+ perfectly suitable.  When a feature gives a package
> an advantage, it may be a good strategy to use GPL instead of LGPL, as
> discussed in <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html>.


This is a nice idea but I don't think it is applicable in this case
because there are quite a few non-gplv2 compressors. Moreover the
overhead of maintaining two libraries isn't worth it in my opinion.

regards,
Nikos