Re: Relicensing (most of) binutils/libctf to LGPLv3+?
Project / Subsystem
binutils / binutils
Date
2026-05-09
Proposer
Nick Alcock <nix@esperi.org.uk>
Source type
public_inbox
Consensus
Proposed
Sentiment
—/10
Technical tradeoffs
- • Switching to LGPL may reduce copyleft protections on libctf-nobfd.so.
- • Allows wider adoption of libctf by non-GPL projects.
All attributes
- project
- binutils
- subsystem
- binutils
- patch_id
- —
- discussion_id
- 87y0hslaey.fsf@esperi.org.uk
- source_type
- public_inbox
- title
- Re: Relicensing (most of) binutils/libctf to LGPLv3+?
- headline
- Propose relicensing libctf-nobfd.so to LGPLv3+
- tldr
- To allow the Linux kernel and Clang to use libctf, the proposer suggests relicensing libctf-nobfd.so from GPLv3+ to LGPLv3+.
- proposer
- Nick Alcock <nix@esperi.org.uk>
- consensus
- Proposed
- outcome
- proposed
- sentiment_score
- —
- technical_tradeoffs
-
- • Switching to LGPL may reduce copyleft protections on libctf-nobfd.so.
- • Allows wider adoption of libctf by non-GPL projects.
- series_id
- —
- series_role
- standalone
- series_parts
- []
- tags
-
- • licensing
- • libctf
- • GPL
- • LGPL
- • BTF
- bugzilla_url
- —
- date
- 2026-05-09T00:00:00.000Z
Re: Relicensing (most of) binutils/libctf to LGPLv3+?
The thread proposes relicensing libctf-nobfd.so from GPLv3+ to LGPLv3+. libctf is a library within GNU binutils for reading, manipulating, and writing CTF (Compact Type Format) and BTF (Binary Type Format) data, primarily used for debugging. The primary motivation is to allow the Linux kernel and the Clang compiler to use libctf without GPL license compatibility issues. The kernel needs to manipulate BTF as part of its build, and Clang could benefit from using libctf to generate CTF.