Re: Licensing, was elvis package
On Sun, Apr 26, 1998 at 09:52:32AM +0300, Shaya Potter wrote:
> Probably because it's allowed, doesn't the FSF distribute emacs linked or
> with the ability to link out of the box against Motif?
"linked or with the ability to be linked" -- perhaps that's the critical
difference.
I don't think FSF distributes binaries of emacs (do they?). They only
release the source. Source is just data, and whether you need Motif to
compile it into binary or not is your own problem.
This is why I don't think the author of ncftp had any real legal problems
allowing ncftp to be linked with readline (or even perhaps requiring it; I
don't remember). If you don't distribute binaries of ncftp, you haven't
used readline, and therefore you haven't upset the readline license.
Similarly, if you don't distribute binaries of emacs-Motif or the
(theoretical) kemacs, you haven't violated the emacs license.
This puts Debian in a rather awkward position, since that's exactly what we
want to do: distribute binaries of these programs.
I still question anyway whether linking with a shared library makes a
program a "derived work" but I don't feel like watching that argument again.
Have fun,
Avery
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