On Sun, Dec 25, 2011, at 01:01 PM, Rick Moen wrote: > Quoting Clark C. Evans ([email protected]): > > > What confuses me and what I'm asking here is why licensing > > professionals focus on two items that I consider irrelevant: > > (a) what is the type of linking between D and P? ... (b) is D a derived work of P? What we know is that D ... is derived from O and that D requires P for its operation. > > Please name one such licensing professional (who is not an FSF > spokesman).
What was on my mind was this journal article: Software Interactions and the GNU General Public License By Malcolm Bain in IFOSS L. Rev. Vol 2, No 2 (2010) (http://www.ifosslr.org/ifosslr/article/view/44) What was also on my mind was an informal side chat with an attorney on the stack overflow question [1]. I was referred to the GNU FAQ, especially the answer for plug-ins [2] where the applicability of the copyleft "depends on how the program invokes its plug-ins" and aggregation [3] where it says "sockets... are normally used between two separate programs". This attorney said the specific details of the case were necessary to give any advice, but after my insistence, commented that the community consensus is likely correct. Probably you consider both of these professionals to be associated with the free software foundation. For what it's worth, our own corporate attorney doesn't have a concern with regard to linking technologies, he advices that GPL is quite vague and if we were to use it, we should publicly exclaim our interpretation. To this regard, Larry Rosen's comment [4] is refreshing, matches my expectations, and is broadly helpful: "If GPL advocates insist upon distinguishing among types of functional linking, then talented software engineers will avoid disputes by building shims, APIs, or use dynamic linking to accomplish their functional goals." Unfortunately, this doesn't give me enough guidance on the applicability of copyleft; specifically with my 3-work scenario where someone uses a shim/adapter to include proprietary functionality via a WebAPI. I keep asking this in this public forum since it matters quite a bit to the effectiveness of the GPL. If this sort of work around is acceptable by the community, then other than nuance value, there really is no point in copyleft, and one should use Apache or keep the work proprietary. Assuming a shim/adapter creates a derived work under copyright law so that its distribution could be limited based on conditions of the license agreement, does the GPLv3 actually prevent the distribution of a derived work when its operation requires an independent, proprietary component that has no free software substitute? In particular, does the relation vis-a-via copyright law between the adapter/shim to the independent proprietary work matter if it's clear enough that the adapter/shim cannot operate without the proprietary work? Best, Clark [1] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4351119/if-i-use-gnu-gpl-code-with-my-own-server-side-code-do-i-need-to-open-my-server/ [2] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLAndPlugins [3] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggregation [4] http://projects.opensource.org/pipermail/license-discuss/2011-December/000091.html _______________________________________________ License-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
