Re: XFree86 license difficulties

[Ken Arromdee <arromdee@rahul.net>]

On 3 Feb 2004, Henning Makholm wrote:
> > But if you link the binary with the C library of a proprietary Unix (and it's
> > not dynamic linking), you are distributing the component with the executable
> No I'm not. I can perfectly well give away a staically linked binary
> without also giving a copy of the libc.a file is linked with. The fact
> that *parts* of the library go into the binary cannot be used to
> recover a libc.a that the recipient of my binary can use to recompile
> from scratch. Those parts are not even easily identifyable in the binary.

So it doesn't count as distributing the component unless you distribute the
entire unaltered file?  That seems like a strange interpretation, prone to
some obvious loopholes.