Måns Rullgård wrote:
If that is the case, wouldn't the simplest course of action be simply to strip the build system from the tarball and replace it with a free one written by the maintainer?Don Armstrong <don@debian.org> writes:On Sun, 19 Mar 2006, Måns Rullgård wrote:Don Armstrong <don@debian.org> writes: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.Given only the source files, writing a makefile that will produce a working executable is fairly simple. I see makefiles as more of a convenience than a necessity to build a program. You might as well argue that every program in Debian is a derivative of apt and the package descriptions, since the former uses rules in the latter to decide what to install. Again, I say this is just a convenience that saves users the time to find out and install the dependencies manually.
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