Raul Miller wrote: [ ... ]
> On Mon, Feb 21, 2000 at 03:39:47PM -0500, Andreas Pour wrote: > > I'm asking a very straight-forward question: if you link a dynamic > > library to a GPL Program, does the source code of the library have to > > be licensed under the GPL? I think you are really waffling on this > > issue. Please give a straight answer to this question. > > Let me ask you a "straightforward" question: if you dissolve sugar in > water, can you make the sugar boil? > > [Seems to me that while you can make the sugar water boil, the sugar > itself does not. There might be some rather exceptional conditions > where you could make sugar boil, but they have very little to do with > the conditions where sugar water boils.] > > Similarly, the program, which includes the library, has to be license > under the GPL while the library -- considered as an entity unto itself -- > does not. > > If this doesn't make sense to you then I'd say that your question is, > in fact, not at all straightforward. [ ... ] > > I know the licenses are different. The question is still, does the > > "complete source code" to a GPL program have to be licensed under > > the GPL? In particular, if grep links to libc, does libc have to be > > licensed under the GPL, under your reading of Sections 3(a)/2(b) of > > the GPL? > > The library (using LGPL terminology) has to grant permission to be > included in the collective work (the "Program", using GPL terminology), > and the work as a whole is distributed under the terms of the collective > license. > > So: the complete source code has to be licensed under the GPL, but > some of the individual elements of it do not. [ ... ] > > Please explain what that means. How does the collective copyright > > apply to a component of the collective work? When I read the Copyright > > Act it is clear to me that a collective copyright is separate from the > > component works. > > The collective copyright is a separate license from that which is applied > to some of the component works. The collective copyright applies to the > work as a whole. The work as a whole is distributed under the terms of > the collective copyright. Where individual copyrights apply (which are > different from the collective copyright) they must make it legal for > those individual parts to be distributed under the collective copyright. > > I don't understand what part of this isn't clear to you. In earlier > messages I thought you indicated you understood these concepts and agreed > with them. I have concluded that you don't understand the relevant principles of copyright law. As it seems you feel the same way about me, any further discussion is pointless. Ciao, Andreas
