Licensing Question

[Richard Zhao]

Hello,

Our team would like to use the ICU library and have a question regarding its licensing. We noted the section in the license file where `aclocal.m4` and `config.guess` were under GPL, except when used as part of a configuration script.

We think that it is fine to pull in due to the exception, but our legal counsel would like to confirm definitively that these files aren't used anywhere else, and that the exception would apply to the whole library.

Thank you for your assistance.

Best regards,

Richard Zhao

[Markus Scherer]

On Thu, Aug 21, 2025 at 12:36 AM 'Richard Zhao' via icu-support <icu-s...@unicode.org> wrote:

Our team would like to use the ICU library and have a question regarding its licensing. We noted the section in the license file where `aclocal.m4` and `config.guess` were under GPL, except when used as part of a configuration script.

We think that it is fine to pull in due to the exception, but our legal counsel would like to confirm definitively that these files aren't used anywhere else, and that the exception would apply to the whole library.

These scripts are only used when building ICU from its source code using the configure+Makefile build system.

It is my belief that the exception applies.

I am not a lawyer.

If you use a different build system, then you can delete these files from your copy of ICU, and delete the corresponding parts of the LICENSE file. I know of code bases that do this.

Best regards,

markus

[Steven R. Loomis]

Hi, a couple of technical points.

- config.guess  and config.sub are called when the ‘configure’ script is run. They are not used at any otherr time

- aclocal.m4 is used during the process of regenerating the configure script, which is normally only done by the project maintainers.

Also, you said “except when used as part of a configuration script”, however I don’t find that language in the files- the license text is at the top of config.guess and config.sub files. Hope this helps.

Steven

Sent from my iPad

On Aug 21, 2025, at 2:36 AM, 'Richard Zhao' via icu-support <icu-s...@unicode.org> wrote:



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