Re: A simple mistake (was Re: Should we ship KDE in hamm?)
On Fri, Jul 24, 1998 at 05:35:50PM +0100, Oliver Elphick wrote:
> Marcus Brinkmann wrote:
> >
> >The Bern convention explicitely says, that if you have not a licence for it,
> >it is FORBIDDEN.
> >
> >This is a matter of fact.
>
> I don't dispute it. The point is that if a licence is self-contradictory
> an English court will attempt to interpret what was meant.
Section 7 of the GPL:
If any portion of this section is held invalid or unenforceable under
any particular circumstance, the balance of the section is intended to
apply and the section as a whole is intended to apply in other
circumstances.
This means, that the court would still be restricted in his interpretation
to the actual wording. You are reckognizing this, but you are drawing the
wrong consequences from the wording of the GPL.
> Perhaps a German court would take a different line.
No.
> >Furthermore, from a legal point of view, statically and dynamically linking
> >is the same. If the linking is done at build time or at run time doesn't
> >matter at all.
>
> You say 'from a legal point of view'; as far as I am aware there is no
> legal point of view on this. Until there has been a case where this
> is in dispute, there won't be. The actual words of the GPL do not seem to
> support your opinion.
Legal view = commom sense.
Try to explain my mother what the difference there is between dynamical
linking and static linking.
"But will it work without Qt when it is dynamicall linked, as it is not
included as you say."
"No, but..."
"So where is the difference?".
You say: "the actual words of the GPL do not seem to support your opinion".
I think you are comepletely on the wrong track. In fact you write in
another mail that you don't think it matters what RMS says about it, and
again you are wrong. It matters. And it does support my opinion.
>From the GPL:
These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If
identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program,
and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in
themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those
sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you
distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based
on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of
this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the
entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.
Nobody is stated that it must be statically linked to be assumed to be
dependent of each other. IMHO, dynamically linking is a STRONG dependency
between two parts of the whole work.
I think this is a very reasonable point of view and it is supported by
common sense. Seperating stat. and dyn. linking in this legal matter is
nonsense and not supported by anything.
BTW: It is not sufficient for one Linux Distribution to ship with Qt to
circumvent this legal clause.
Marcus
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