Tom Lane <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Robert Treat <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > On Sunday 01 January 2006 18:51, Andrew Dunstan wrote: > >> This has been debated ad nauseam in the past. The consensus, bar a few > >> people with more advanced paranoia than I suffer from, is that we can ;-) > > > I don't think it is good practice to ship packaged software that is > > statically > > linked to a gpl library and then claim that your package is bsd licensed. > > Robert is 100% right.
I suspect Andrew was mixing up two different aspects of this. There isn't much dispute that shipping a binary linked (statically or dynamically) with a library depends on your license to distribute derivative works of that library. Ie, that Andrew's wrong and shipping a binary linked with a GPL'd library is only legal if you follow the terms of the GPL. There is controversy over whether the software that requires that library becomes a derivative work itself. For example whether a Gimp plugin that is useless without the Gimp would be a derivative work of the Gimp itself and be undistributable unless you followed the Gimp license terms. Most people do agree when the question is put for something like Gimp plugins but seem to draw a distinction between that and things like Postgres that happen to depend on linking with libreadline where libreadline is a rather incidental part of the whole system. In RMS's view (and the view of the actual practicing lawyers who have examined this question when real money was on the line, but then I guess lawyers are paid well to have more advanced cases of paranoia than Andrew) is that there's no such distinction in law and having software that depends on libreadline is just as much bound by the GPL as a Gimp plugin. But that said, in the case of a binary there's really no controversy. A binary that's linked against libreadline clearly can't be legally distributed without following the terms of the GPL. -- greg ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 6: explain analyze is your friend
