Re: Heart of the debate
On Wed, Feb 16, 2000 at 11:30:31AM +1100, Don Sanders wrote:
> Personally I think that it is theoretically possible to license a binary under
> the GPL, but I don't think it make much sense to do so, (it's equivalent to
> applying the GPL to say a file of raw binary data of rainfall measurements).
You're not legally allowed to distribute a binary without a license.
> For instance Section 0 of the GPL requires that in order to apply the GPL to a
> work that work must contain a notice saying it may be "distributed under the
> terms of this General Public License".
>
> I would assume in source code form this would be done by the use of comments.
> However the act of compilation would strip out the comments leaving no such
> notice in the binaries.
>
> Now on this system
> $strings grep | grep -i General
> $strings grep | grep -i GPL
> $strings grep | grep -i GNU
> GNU e?grep, version 1.6
> $
>
> (I also did a strings grep | more just to be sure).
>
> Thus I conclude that the binary for GNU grep contains no such notice and is not
> licensed under the GPL. (The source code is a different matter entirely).
The way debian solves this is by not distributing GNU grep alone,
but as a part of a larger work (the grep package) which includes the
copyright notice.
Doesn't seem like much of a problem to me.
--
Raul
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