Re: GPL/LGPL confusion

[Raul Miller <moth@debian.org>]

On Tue, Jul 03, 2001 at 04:38:21PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> Alice wrote foo.c, licensed under the GNU X11 license.

I've never seen a GNU X11 license, nor is one listed at
http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/license-list.html.

> Bob wrote bar.c, licensed under the GNU GPL.
> 
> Carol writes baz.c, and builds /usr/bin/baz by statically linking each of
>       foo.o, bar.o, and baz.o. This time, Carol has to abide by both the
>       GPL and the "X11" license.

To avoid discussion of the fair use issue, I'll assume that carol
is distributing /usr/bin/baz to millions of people.

>       The GPL says she "must cause [the work] to be licensed as a
>       whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this
>       license".

That would be the source tree for /usr/bin/baz (and, thus, builds of
/usr/bin/baz).

>       That doesn't require her to license baz.c like that, but it does
>       require her to license /usr/bin/baz like that.

Essentially, yes.

>       As this is a derived work based on foo.c, the question
>       is, can she do this?

And, if not, what clause of the grant of copyright on foo.c is she
violating?

>       Bob did last time and misrepresenting her ability to sublicense
>       works based on foo.c and infringing on Alice's copyright, or
>       she's not abiding by the terms of the GPL (ie, not licensing the
>       work as a whole in the proper way), and thus infringing on Bob's
>       copyright.

This sentence doesn't make grammatical sense.


                            * * * * *

> In particular, AIUI, rms and the FSF believe the last clause from the
> OpenSSL license makes that license GPL incompatible. To quote Aaron
> Lehmann (giving advice from an unnamed friend) from a few weeks ago on
> this list:
> 
> ]  * The licence and distribution terms for any publically available
> ]  * version or derivative of this code cannot be changed. i.e. this
> ]  * code cannot simply be copied and put under another distribution
> ]  * licence [including the GNU Public Licence.]

That idea is probably based on the legal idea that there must be
some legally valid purpose to all language in a legal document.

And, it its possible to read that sentence as if OpenSSL can't be
published in any work with a derivative copyright (unless that
derivative copyright license is OpenSSL's).

Thanks,

-- 
Raul