AS>> That's a common misconception. It should have been obvious, but
AS>> somehow never is, that no amount of licensing trickery can make one
AS>> program be considered a derivative work of an unrelated program. And
See, this is an official position of RMS. I have quotes from him
personally saying this. So you can tell it that way or this way but we
both know that GPL is what RMS wants it to be, and if you try to argue,
RMS will just force you into his position - he has enough supporters and
public weight to do this.
AS>> you link them together. What the GPL is saying that you cannot
AS>> distribute someone's GPLed code as a part of a larger program unless
AS>> you give users at least the same rights they would get were the
Not only. You cannot also distribute "derived work", where "derived
work" includes code made to be interoperable with GPL code. Yes, I know
this sounds insane and goes beyond the scope of the copyright, but this is
an official position from RMS.
AS>> Also, nowhere does the GPL limit "interoperability". Only use code as
I also thought so. But RMS says it does. Here is RMS quote about product
that is designed to work with GPL readline library (it has no line of
readline code, except including headers), and distributed in open-source
with non-GPL license:
==quote==
Richard Stallman wrote:
That you don't distribute binaries does not change the fact that your
source code is designed to include Readline in the program. You
cannot do that, now that your license is incompatible with the GPL.
==end quote==
It is that simple.
AS>> part of another program. Whether or not you consider an executable and
AS>> a dynamic library accompanying it two parts of the same program or not
AS>> is a different issue. GPLv3 intends to clarify this and other points.
I hope so, but still - GPL is what RMS says it is. And he disagrees with
you.
AS>> caused companies to become worryingly paranoid. All this has literally
AS>> NOTHING to do with the licensing of code. The only reason why
Well, I think it does. When some licensing scheme is advertized as "free",
and you see that people avoid code by this scheme like plague -
something's fishy here.
AS>> use the GPL, and usually don't. For example, most of Gnome is under
AS>> the LGPL (beats me why KDE chose the GPL while opposing it so
RMS is actively against using LGPL for libraries.
BTW: /usr/doc/gnome-libs-.../COPYING on my system has a perfect copy of
GPL2, not LGPL. Am I missing something? Or you meant GTK, which _is_ LGPL?
AS>> exactly is the reason for the GPL. I can't see what your problem is
AS>> here, except for the linguistic definition of "free".
Yeah, exactly this - it's not "free".
AS>> (I don't know what projects you are referring to that had to reinvent
AS>> the wheel, but I gather they were either misinformed about the GPL's
All BSD's had to rewrite readline library to get rid of GPL. That's only
one example.
AS>> restrictions, or specifically wanted their project to be forked into
AS>> proprietary products, like the BSDs do.)
Here you lost me. I know only one product of current BSDs to be
commercialized - BSDI. And no spawns of Net*, Open*, etc.
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED] \/ There shall be counsels taken
Stanislav Malyshev /\ Stronger than Morgul-spells
phone +972-3-9316425 /\ JRRT LotR.
http://sharat.co.il/frodo/ whois:!SM8333
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