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Re: cdrtools



On Wed, 2006-07-12 at 01:02 +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> Erast Benson <erast@gnusolaris.org> wrote:
> 
> > Don't forget that Joerg were main developer of cdrtools for quite some
> > time and we should respect his point of view on how result of his work
> > for the last (what 10 years?) should be licensed. Debian is built on top
> > of contributions made by people like Joerg. Besides, Joerg made a good
> > point on why he thinks that his mix of CDDL and GPL code is OK. Please
> > provide real fact arguments aligned with general license interpretation
> > rules, if none provided, I suggest to close those bugs.
> 
> 1) The GPL requires that all scripts used to control compilation and 
> installation of the executable be released under terms compatible with 
> the GPL.

Joerg clearly stands that:

1) Makefiles != scripts or at least it is unclear whether Makefiles may
be called "scripts":

""" GPL §3 requires the "scripts for compilation" to be provided but
as a first note, it is unclear whether Makefiles may be called
"scripts".

Makefiles are programs written in a non-scripting language:
I call this language "make". It is a non-algorithmic language but
a rule based language (like e.g. CDL2)."""

but this is not the main point of his argument.

> 2) The Schily makefile system is licensed under the CDDL.

which is totally fine (read below)

> 3) The Schily makefile system is used to control compilation and 
> installation of the executable

Makefile(s) are not exactly scripts... (read above)

> 4) The CDDL is not compatible with the GPL

But not in his case. He explains:

"""Next point is that GPL §2 requires that the whole code of a project 
(if you carefully read GPL §2, this does only include things that do
end up in the binary) that is made from including other peoples GPL code
is to be made available under the GPL.

This means in other words: If I take other people's GPL code and create
a "derived work" from that code, I need to make the whole work available
under GPL. I do not need to make non-GPL code available at all, if GPL
code is derived on that code. I do not need to make the build system 
available under GPL (GPL §3 requires me to make it available but does
not mention a license) and the build system is not code that is
"derived" from the GPLd project."""

later he explains:

"""This means in other words: If I take other people's GPL code and
create a "derived work" from that code, I need to make the whole work
available under GPL. I do not need to make non-GPL code available at
all, if GPL code is derived on that code. I do not need to make the
build system available under GPL (GPL §3 requires me to make it
available but does not mention a license) and the build system is not
code that is "derived" from the GPLd project."""

The key point is: GPL is pure source license. It does not explicitly
require you to use a specific license for the binary in case you make
the source available.

Erast



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