Hi, I'd like to seek clarification on a section of Ubuntu Policy.
Currently, the Ubuntu Policy seems to make no reference to the term 'system library' which is a well documented part of of the GPL. Essentially, software distributed under the GPL may link against software that is usually considered incompatible with the GPL (either by non-compatible open source licence or plainly proprietary). A clear example of this is the toolchain, libc and friends, where little consideration is used in licence adherence of binaries linking against this. However, the policy could be interpreted to be more hard line than the FSF intend. In such, GPL software should only link against GPL compatible system libraries. I don't believe this to be the intention of ubuntu-policy, but would request that the wording is amended to make this clear. As outlined in Ubuntu Policy, 2.1[0], titled "Must not be distributed under a license specific to Ubuntu" it states - "The rights attached to the software must not depend on the programme's being part of Ubuntu system. So we will not distribute software for which Ubuntu has a "special" exemption or right, and we will not put our own software into Ubuntu and then refuse you the right to pass it on.". Which oddly applies to 3 of the 4 archive components (I would have expected it to be main & universe, or all 4). I feel that the intention of this, is to protect the Ubuntu Archives from software provided with Ubuntu specific licence, or software that would normally belong in Canonical Partner archive and not binaries merely linking against system libraries. Specifically, the GPL's definition of System Library seems to be: ' The “System Libraries” of an executable work include anything, other than the work as a whole, that (a) is included in the normal form of packaging a Major Component, but which is not part of that Major Component, and (b) serves only to enable use of the work with that Major Component, or to implement a Standard Interface for which an implementation is available to the public in source code form. ' [1] [0] http://people.canonical.com/~cjwatson/ubuntu-policy/policy.html/ch-archive.html#s-ulp [1] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html Thanks. -- Kind Regards, Dave Walker <dave.wal...@canonical.com> Engineering Manager, Ubuntu Server -- technical-board mailing list technical-board@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/technical-board
