Re: Netatalk and SSL
Jochen Voss <voss@seehuhn.de> writes:
> On Mon, Jun 19, 2006 at 11:21:59AM -0700, Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote:
>> You cannot distribute GPL'd source which has been modified to link to
>> a GPL-incompatible library when the only way the source would be
>> useful is if it is, in fact, linked to that library.
>
> Just for me to learn something: which clause of the GPL is this? I
> did not find the concept of the source code being useful together with
> one thing or another in the GPL.
>
> Is the theory behind this, that the modified source code together with
> the GPL-incompatible library (The library source? Or the compiled
> library?) forms a "modified work" (in the sense of clause 2)?
You cannot evade the terms of the GPL by shipping components
separately when you would not be allowed to ship them together, nor
does it matter whether two different people do the shipping.
Remember always that the GPL applies to the whole program, not to
individual files, functions, or lines of code.
If the GPL'd source is only useful with GPL-incompatible libfoo, then
you and the shipper of libfoo are combining to ship a program which
contains incompatible licenses, and this is not allowed.
If the GPL'd source is useful with various equivalent libraries, some
GPL-incompatible, some not, then the shipper of the GPL'd source is
not breaking any rules, because they are not necessarily intending to
combine their code with the incompatible code.
If you are shipping *binaries* however, which declare shared library
dependencies on the GPL-incompatible library, then that excuse
vanishes.
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