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 _______________________________________________ Qemu-devel mailing list Qemu-devel@nongnu.org http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/qemu-devel