Re: Netatalk and OpenSSL licencing
On Tue, Aug 10, 2004 at 12:33:14PM +0200, Freek Dijkstra wrote:
> You indeed can not do that. But I hope you can do the reverse: take
> propriatory code, push it into a loadable module, making your GPL code use
> it, and make them into two seperate downloads.
That's questionable. That would mean that as a proprietary
application writer, I could use a GPL library in my proprietary
application simply by putting all my proprietary code into a
different library, and converting the GPL code into an application
that uses the proprietary library (or loadable module). This seems
a bit odd.
(Of course, an _end user_ can always make the combination
themselves, and as long as the combination is never distributed,
no licenses are harmed.)
> As a side-note. What I want is already common practice. In particular this
> is what happens in kernel development. The GNU/Linux kernel is GPL-licenced,
> while a lot of hardware drivers (the loadable modules) have non-GPL
> compatible licences.
The legality of doing this is contended.
There's an additional condition that has been touched upon, but not
directly addressed. There's a substantial difference between a
vendor placing a binary kernel module on their web site, and an
embedded manufacturer that ships a product with Linux and a binary
kernel module. In the latter case, the manufacturer is shipping
a combined product that is clearly a derivative of both Linux and
the binary driver, in violation of the kernel's license. In the
former case, I'm not so quick to judge.
In Debian's case, we're always like the embedded manufacturer. We
ship the entire whole, not pieces that happen to work together when
you download them from various sites.
dave...
Reply to: