I'm changing the Subject: header because some people who are not reading the thread seem to have inferred, from the unchanging subject, that the original huge thread was all about a single topic. Although this particular topic would probably be a better fit for fedora-legal, I believe most of its subscribers are sufficiently familiar with Free Software licensing to tell that Les' theory is flawed, whereas many Free Software users in this list operate under the same false assumptions and the influence of FUD against the GPL, so I think this sub-thread will remain more useful here. For those who somehow got the impression that this list was supposed to be limited to technical matters, please update your kill files to ignore this thread as well. On Jul 26, 2008, Les Mikesell <lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > A lawyer can't change what it says. Indeed. But a lawyer you trust could be able to convince you you've misunderstood it. > If the FSF doesn't not believe that the work-as-a-whole clause > actually means the terms must cover the work as a whole, It does. The terms are permissions, the conditions are requirements for the exercise of the permissions. It doesn't take away any other permissions you might have. That it does is the incorrect assumption that's misleading you. Consider this scenario: John A. Hacker develops, from scratch, a program that contains two source files: lib.c and main.c. lib.c was developed to be released as a separate library, under the modified (3-clause) BSD license (so these are the headers it carries), whereas main.c was developed to be released under the GPL (so these are the headers it carries). John A. publishes the whole, named gnothing, under the GPLv2+, and never publishes lib.c in any other way. Wanda B. Foreman downloads gnothing, and notices lib.c would be really useful in his project, linstall. She thus modifies gnothing by removing main.c and the build scripts, and then adds lib.c to her version control system, along with changes to the build machinery to have lib.c built and linked into his own program. She then publishes linstall, under the GPLv3+. Ken C. Farsight has access to Wanda's VCS repository, and sees lib.c show up there. It provides just the feature he wanted for his bsdown Free Software program, that he's always distributed under the 3-clause BSD license. He copies lib.c into bsdown and releases a new version of bsdown. Evelyn D. Scent maintains a non-Free fork of bsdown called macrash, so she takes this new release containing lib.c, merges the add-on features she maintains, and publishes a new release, under the usual restrictive EULA, known to be compatible with the 3-clause BSD license. Please ask your lawyer questions such as: - Has any party had his/her license to distribute gnothing or lib.c automatically terminated? - Can John A. Hacker stop any of the other 3 from distributing lib.c in linstall, bsdown, or macrash, under the licenses given or implied by the description above, or even by itself under the modified BSD license, without a copy of the GPL? - Can Evelyn be stopped by any of the other 3 from distributing this version of macrash containing lib.c, under the usual EULA? then let us know how he justifies the answers. > Would this imaginative interpretation also permit sharing of > GPL-covered components modified to link with proprietary libraries > among people who otherwise have the right to do so AFAIK the GPL doesn't stop anyone from adding dependencies on non-GPLed libraries to GPLed programs. In fact, this is very common, in the particular case of system libraries on non-Free operating systems. It doesn't grant permission for the GPLed program be distributed in a form that contains the library or derived portions thereof, without also offering the corresponding sources of the library under the GPL, but if you distribute the GPLed program in source code form, you're covered, and if you can create an object form of the program that does not contain code derived from the library, and then distribute it, you're also covered. Now, if you split things up into a separate library, as a means to circumvent the GPL, and distribute both the library and the GPLed program that you modified so as to depend on it, you might still face a lawsuit on the grounds that the library is actually a derived work, or even that it is part of a single work, and the separation is just a trick to try to circumvent the license. A judge or a jury might actually side with the copyright holder of the program you modified, in this case. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! => http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
