On Sun, 19 Mar 2006, Måns Rullgård wrote: > Don Armstrong <don@debian.org> writes: > > It's not that they have to be available, it's just that they have > > to be compatible. [Moreover, JS violation of the GPL isn't > > interesting because he's presumably the copyright holder, and can > > therefore do whatever he wants with his work.] > > Even if JS can do whatever he wants, Debian can't lawfully > distribute a work with inconsistent license terms. Clearly. The parenthetical is there only to deal with the claim that JS is violating the GPL. It has no bearing on what Debian must do. > > Not just linking; it's the creation of a derivative work of a > > GPLed work. Frankly, I don't see how you can argue that cdrecord > > is not a derivative work of the GPLed part of cdrecord and the > > build system. > > I disagree. The final executable is no more a derivative of the > build system than it is of the compiler. After all, no parts of the > makefiles end up inside the executable. The makefiles direct the assembly of the executable, just like the source code directs the operation of the compiler. [And indeed, some question as to whether some part of the executable is a dirived work of the compiler exists as well; luckily there are exceptions in the licences of gcc to deal with this case.] There are multiple different ways that the compiler and assembler can be directed by the makefile; quite a large number of them will produce an operational executable. Don Armstrong -- Never underestimate the power of human stupidity. -- Robert Heinlein http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu
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