In message: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Paul Brook <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
: > 4. There is a slippery slope here -
:
: There's a slippery slope both ways. If you assume vital parts of your system
: are going to be closed source then why bother with open source at all. Just
: use Windows or HPUX.
:
: > if Linux kernel policies can change
: > to force all kernel-space binding to be GPL (even though Linus decreed
: > that this is not the case years ago), what's next? Libraries that make
: > kernel interface calls should be GPL rather than LGPL?
:
: Now you're talking total nonsense.
:
: The GPL explicitly says that OS is exempt from the requirements placed on an
: application:
:
: "the source code distributed need not include
: anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary
: form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the
: operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component
: itself accompanies the executable."
I think that you are missing the point. He's not saying that you have
to distribute the source (which is what that exemption is about).
He's saying that the license on a mere library cannot and should not
force applications linked with that library to become a derived work.
And he's right about that being a dangerous precident. If I call
write(2) in my application, the mere fact that the kernel is GPL'd
shouldn't matter for the license of my application. It is not a
derived work.
The circumlocutions that some people go through to try to show that
somehow using internal kernel interfaces make something a derived work
do border on the absurd and are a very agressive interpretation of
what makes a work a derived work. That interpretation needs to be
curbed, otherwise we'd have a slipperly slope where libc becomes GPL'd
and merely linking against it once and providing that binary infects
the application with the GPL (a position that no court has endorced).
Warner
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