On Wed, 2007-10-10 at 18:57 -0500, Chris Adams wrote: > Once upon a time, Simo Sorce <ssorce@xxxxxxxxxx> said: > > On Wed, 2007-10-10 at 13:21 -0800, Jeff Spaleta wrote: > > > But Nicolas has stated my murkier concern. If we just drop re-licensed > > > libsmbclient into place with no enforced technical break like a soname > > > change or a library renaming, are we acting negligently with regard to > > > protecting our own users who consume pieces of rawhide to suppliment > > > F7 or soon to be F8? If the re-licensed code can just drop into place, > > > are we encouraging users to violate the license at runtime by making > > > it too easy to use the re-licensing binary in situations where its > > > inappropriate? > > > > Short answer: no > > So what if KDE used a private copy of libsmclient.so.0 (from 3.0 so > GPLv2) during build but didn't ship it? As long as the newer version is > ABI compatible (even if the license isn't), is there a violation? I'm > sure some would say it is a violation of the spirit, but is there a > technical violation? > > If so, where is the violation? Where does it physically occur? > > I haven't read GPLv3 closely, but "linking" doesn't appear anywhere in > GPLv2 except in a single note in the appendix (not in the license terms > itself). Everything else in GPLv2 talks about derivative works. > Arguably, KDE's use of libsmbclient is a derivative work of a GPLv2 > product. As long as the interface to that product doesn't change (so > KDE's use of the product doesn't change), KDE could claim to be a > derivative work of the GPLv2 product. Samba is NOT changing the ABI, so > any derivative works (that are derivative by action of using the > libsmbclient.so.0 interface) can still claim to be derivatives of only > the GPLv2 library. > > I'm really curious about this (not just trying to still the flames): if > a GPLv2-only program is linked against a GPLv2 (or 2+) library and the > library switches to GPLv3 (or 3+), who is violating the license? Use > (e.g. an end-user actually loading the KDE binary that dynamically links > against libsmbclient.so.0) is not covered by the GPLv2, so the end-user > is not violating it (because they aren't distributing). A distributor > could be building against a GPLv2 version of the library but only > distributing the GPLv3 version; is that a violation (why)? Far from being a flame. Your question is perfectly legitimate, but I don't think there is anybody on this list with enough legal expertise to answer. We need legal advice to be able to answer this question. Simo. -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
