Re: cdrtools
On Saturday 12 August 2006 14:34 pm, you wrote:
> Daniel Schepler <schepler@math.berkeley.edu> writes:
> > On Saturday 12 August 2006 02:47 am, Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote:
> >> Daniel Schepler <schepler@math.berkeley.edu> writes:
> >> > According to the GPL, section 0:
> >> >
> >> > The act of running the Program is not restricted...
> >> >
> >> > And since dynamic linking is done at the time the program is run, this
> >> > would appear to me to be what applies. In particular, it appears to
> >> > me that you could satisfy the GPL and still dynamically link against a
> >> > non-free library, and distribute both, by invoking the "mere
> >> > aggregation" clause of section 2.
> >>
> >> This does not mean that anything that happens when you run the program
> >> is not restricted. For example, the act of running GNU cp and sed is
> >> not restricted, but that cann't possibly mean that the GPL gives you
> >> carte blanche to go ahead and violate the GPL through use of cp and
> >> sed.
> >
> > I'm afraid I don't see what your point is, here. Of course the GPL
> > allowing me to use a GPL'd httpd to distribute non-free software
> > doesn't automatically mean I would be blameless if I used it to
> > distribute, say, a non-free program foo linked against libmad. The
> > point, I think, is that distributing such a thing as the non-free
> > binary of foo along with a package of a shared libmad is essentially
> > the same as distributing a binary with libmad linked in statically,
> > which is clearly disallowed. Both are just different ways of
> > distributing the combined work of foo + libmad.
>
> Yes, I agree completely. This seems to be the exact opposite of what
> you said in the quoted text above.
Well, yes, the original text was part of a question I asked on how the GPL was
to be interpreted to cover dynamic linking, to which I later found a
reasonable answer myself which I repeated in the later mail. (The
hypothetical example which really convinced me was of EvilCo trying to
circumvent the GPL by distributing their program foo as separate downloads of
foo.o and libgpldlib.a and asking users to link the program themselves --
which is more obviously invalid.)
--
Daniel Schepler
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