On Mon, Mar 25, 2002 at 05:31:01PM -0600, Steve Langasek wrote:
> Although I can see that this conclusion appears reasonable (at least
> superficially), I'm not convinced that "trivially convertible" is
> sufficient to satisfy the GPL,
Then you probably should talk to the FSF about this. It's a fairly subtle
and confusing issue.
> If you distribute under the LGPL to
> comply with the copyrights of other non-GPL code in the archive, you are
> therefore not distributing it under the GPL,
It doesn't work quite that way. You're not required to "distribute it
under the GPL", you're required to be able to distribute it under the
*terms* of the GPL. If I happen to give you a piece of BSD licensed code,
maintaining the copyright notices, including source, and including any
interactive notices of the licensing, then what I'm doing is obeying the
BSD license, and being a little generous; but in so doing I also happen to
be obeying the terms that would be required if the code were GPLed. Just
because I happen to obey those terms doesn't mean they actually exist,
or are required. The viral nature of the GPL simply requires the actual
license of my code to allow me to act in the same way I would if it were
GPLed. It doesn't require the code to actually be GPLed.
You're not relicensing the software, you're not converting the license
to the GPL.
> Although I don't think it is the /intent/ of the GPL to prohibit what
> we're doing, I'm also not entirely comfortable with the uncertainty of
> whether an entity with a minor copyright stake in a GPLed work we
> distribute, plus a lot of lawyers, could sue SPI for this and win.
Then you should talk to the FSF, as the authors and current experts on the
implications of the GPL. Seriously.
It's unfortunate that there isn't a "GPL Subtleties" FAQ somewhere that
discusses these things properly. Probably it'd also have to discuss
flaws in the GPL that could allow proprietry vendors to abuse GPLed code,
which the FSF doesn't like people doing.
Cheers,
aj
--
Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred.
``Debian: giving you the power to shoot yourself in each
toe individually.'' -- with kudos to Greg Lehey
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