On Tue, Jun 08, 2004 at 11:42:12AM -0700, Ken Arromdee wrote: > On Tue, 8 Jun 2004, Josh Triplett wrote: > > That is commonly done for packages that allow distribution as source > > only, or do not allow distribution of binaries built from modified > > source. It does not get around the GPL's requirements. Quoting from > > http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/pragmatic.html : > > > Consider GNU Objective C. NeXT initially wanted to make this front > > > end proprietary; they proposed to release it as .o files, and let > > > users link them with the rest of GCC, thinking this might be a way > > > around the GPL's requirements. But our lawyer said that this would > > > not evade the requirements, that it was not allowed. And so they made > > > the Objective C front end free software. > > On the other hand, their lawyer is an interested party. It's like trusting a > MPAA lawyer to interpret the DMCA for you. > > The FSF's position here is well-known, but has some odd implications. For > instance, if you write code that requires Windows libraries, it is a derivative > work of Windows, and thus Microsoft can at any time prohibit you from > distributing it. Bad example. There are two implementations of most of the significant win32 libraries - windows and wine. Anything which works on both is a derivative of neither. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- |
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