Re: 'GPL encumbrance problems' (jdow)

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On Thu, 2006-01-19 at 00:34 -0600, Mike McCarty wrote:
> STYMA, ROBERT E (ROBERT) wrote:
> >>>Does your application work without the GPL library? No? So your
> >>>application _needs_ someone else his copyrighted work to 
> >>
> >>function. So
> >>
> >>>you _need_ the work someone else did to make money? And you _demand_
> >>>that it comes for free and gratis! If you don't like the 
> >>
> >>GPL license of
> >>
> >>>the library, rewrite it, nothing stops you from doing that. 
> >>
> > The direction this discussion is going seems to be that if code
> > makes use of a shared library (.so) directly or indiretly which
> > is GPL'ed and that code is to be distributed, it has to be GPL'ed. 
> > A quick check of my FC4 box shows 654 .so files in /usr/lib. (not 
> > counting soft links.)  Is there a list showing which of these are
> > LGPL and which are GPL?
> 
> Not quite, but almost. GPL and LGPL make different claims. For GPL,
> AIUI, what you say is correct. For LGPL, it only says that you
> have to provide everything needed to rebuild. If you use other
> libraries to rebuild, then you have to supply copies of the libraries
> you link with. If the other libraries do not permit this, then
> you cannot distribute the executable.
> 
> > I seem to remember that libc.so is LGPL, so that takes care of
> > the "hello world" program.
> 
> That about sums it up. I have never released a commercial program
> for Linux, and probably never will. Mostly because Linux is not
> Linux, but rather Linux+GNU, and all of GNU is GPL or LGPL.
> Linux per se is not the problem, the problem is that *building*
> for Linux uses GNU, which, like all FSF stuff, is GPL or LGPL,
> both of which are highly infective (though LGPL is slighly less
> so).
Non-sense. The Linux glibc's and other fundamental system libraries'
licenses (e.g. libstdc++) have been carefully chosen to allow this case.

> Maybe Borland will come out with a nice compiler for Linux, and
> we'll be able to develop good commercial software for Linux. Who
> knows?
Non-sense. Neither does using GNU tools to develop software for linux
doesn't put them under the GPL nor will proprietary toolchains help you
to circumvent glibc.

>  Borland's licenses for the link library are much more generous
> than the FSF's. The FSF is dedicated to the proposition that
> developers should not be compensated for their work, only
> maintainers and distributers, and they only for value added.
Non-sense. How do you think do SW vendors implement commercial SW for
Linux?

Ralf



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