Re: Licensing Problems with Debian Packages (Was Re: Copyright lawyers analysis of Andreas Pour's Interpretation)
Raul Miller wrote:
[ ... ]
> On Mon, Feb 21, 2000 at 03:39:47PM -0500, Andreas Pour wrote:
> > I'm asking a very straight-forward question: if you link a dynamic
> > library to a GPL Program, does the source code of the library have to
> > be licensed under the GPL? I think you are really waffling on this
> > issue. Please give a straight answer to this question.
>
> Let me ask you a "straightforward" question: if you dissolve sugar in
> water, can you make the sugar boil?
>
> [Seems to me that while you can make the sugar water boil, the sugar
> itself does not. There might be some rather exceptional conditions
> where you could make sugar boil, but they have very little to do with
> the conditions where sugar water boils.]
>
> Similarly, the program, which includes the library, has to be license
> under the GPL while the library -- considered as an entity unto itself --
> does not.
>
> If this doesn't make sense to you then I'd say that your question is,
> in fact, not at all straightforward.
[ ... ]
> > I know the licenses are different. The question is still, does the
> > "complete source code" to a GPL program have to be licensed under
> > the GPL? In particular, if grep links to libc, does libc have to be
> > licensed under the GPL, under your reading of Sections 3(a)/2(b) of
> > the GPL?
>
> The library (using LGPL terminology) has to grant permission to be
> included in the collective work (the "Program", using GPL terminology),
> and the work as a whole is distributed under the terms of the collective
> license.
>
> So: the complete source code has to be licensed under the GPL, but
> some of the individual elements of it do not.
[ ... ]
> > Please explain what that means. How does the collective copyright
> > apply to a component of the collective work? When I read the Copyright
> > Act it is clear to me that a collective copyright is separate from the
> > component works.
>
> The collective copyright is a separate license from that which is applied
> to some of the component works. The collective copyright applies to the
> work as a whole. The work as a whole is distributed under the terms of
> the collective copyright. Where individual copyrights apply (which are
> different from the collective copyright) they must make it legal for
> those individual parts to be distributed under the collective copyright.
>
> I don't understand what part of this isn't clear to you. In earlier
> messages I thought you indicated you understood these concepts and agreed
> with them.
I have concluded that you don't understand the relevant
principles of
copyright law. As it seems you feel the same way about me,
any further
discussion is pointless.
Ciao,
Andreas
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