Re: GPL-licensed packages with depend-chain to OpenSSL

[Brian Thomas Sniffen <bts@alum.mit.edu>]

It's not about derivative works at all.  It's about source.  You need
libc and a bunch of header files to build a C program; thus, to
distribute, you have to pack all those along too.  Unless they're part
of the OS... unless you distribute them too.

It's not about copyright law's definition of derivative works, but
about the GPL's statements involving "The source code for a work means
the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it.  For an
executable work, complete source code means all the source code for
all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition
files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation
of the executable.  However, as a special exception, 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."

-Brian

-- 
Brian Sniffen                                       bts@alum.mit.edu