On Tue, 2006-06-20 at 17:46 +0200, Ingemar Nilsson wrote: > > The point is that no copyrighted material covered by the GPL material is > > being distributed. The end user has his own copy of the GPL'd material > > and the right to use that copy any way he wants. Yet the FSF claims the > > right to prohibit distribution of this other code containing no parts > > under their license by someone with no reason to have ever agreed to > > their license. > > But if your program fails to work if you remove the GPL-covered code, there > is no question that it depends on it. Of course there is a question about it. It doesn't depend on it to exist. I can write something using the description of a library I've never seen. No reasonable interpretation of copyright law says that I can't copy this entirely original work anywhere I want. Whether it runs or not in any or all of those places isn't particularly relevant. The FSF interpretation says otherwise. > And if it depends on GPL-covered > code, it has to be licensed under the GPL as well. Simple as that. It's not simple at all. The program may run only when linked to another person's own copy of the library in question. That's the way copyright and every other license works. Note that there is no restriction against writing and using your own copy of this work, or hiring someone to write it specifically for you. The claim is that this original work can't be distributed because it won't run without the GPL'd part - as though running is some kind of requirement for code distribution or that copyright is somehow dependent on code working correctly... > If, on the other hand, the GPL-covered code can be readily swapped for a > compatible library that is covered by another license, the issue is less > clear, but that might just be me. Then the FSF claim is even more obviously nonsense. But suppose you don't have a copy of the library yourself when you write the original part and don't know the terms of its license. Or you can't disprove the existence of a similar, differently licensed library. > But then, GNU libraries that have > commercial equivalents are mostly (always?) licensed under the LGPL > instead, so it is usually not a problem. The gmp library that raised the issue has since been changed to LGPL, partly because of the bad publicity from the RIPEM dispute but perhaps also because the FSF knows the claim doesn't have much chance of surviving a challenge. But, the same issue applies to code that allows dynamically loaded plugins under different licenses to run in the same process. If any part is GPL'd, none of the others can have any different restrictions. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
