On Sat, Aug 23, 2003 at 10:22:29PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: > On Sat, Aug 23, 2003 at 11:49:47AM +0100, Andrew Suffield wrote: > > On Sat, Aug 23, 2003 at 06:50:19PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: > > > > Isn't this whole thing incompatible with the (L)GPL anyway? The code > > > > in question has been highly modified and integrated into the glibc > > > > source tree, presumably with the modifications under the LGPL, > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > > > It's not appropriate to presume so as to make things illegal. > > > > > Sun has repeatedly clarified elsewhere that the intent of this is > > > > essentially "MIT/X11, except you may not distribute this product > > > > alone." > > > The copyright holder has, apparently, stated their intentions. > > That's not the copyright holder whom you're presuming for. Oh, I misread that. It's not really important anyway; being incompatible with the GPL directly is just as bad. > > And > > their intentions are: "MIT/X11, except you may not distribute this > > product alone". > > > > Are you seriously suggesting that this is *not* an additional > > restriction over those made by the (L)GPL? > > I'm not particularly convinced it's not compatible with the GPL, either. > If you're trying to distribute the product alone, then the GPL has > absolutely no relevance. If you're distributing it with something, GPLed > or not, then it's apparently the same as MIT/X11, which is GPL compatible. [If this were valid, then the GPL wouldn't be incompatible with the Artistic license either]. Anyway, here's an expanded form, written as a deductive sequence: An abbreviated form of the so-called "viral" part of the GPL says that everything you include in a GPLed work must be distributable under the GPL. We interpret this as crossing library boundaries - vis. openssl and GPLed code. Therefore, in order to link a GPLed application with glibc, I need to be able to distribute the source code to glibc under the GPL as well. Note that the "system library" clause of the GPL: "However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable." does not apply, because the component does accompany the executable in our case. From this I can conclude that I need to be able to distribute any given component of the glibc source code under the GPL. So, I need to be able to distribute the sunrpc code under the GPL. I cannot do this, because the restriction on distributing it "alone" is in conflict with clause 6 of the GPL, which prohibits any further retrictions. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- |
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