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Re: LGPL v3 compatibilty



Mike Hommey wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 16, 2007 at 08:39:10AM +0100, M?ns Rullg?rd <mans@mansr.com> wrote:
> > No.  The kernel is completely self-contained.  Some code may of course
> > have been borrowed from glibc at some point, but that's irrelevant.
> 
> Borrowed code *is* relevant, because you can't borrow code *and* change its
> license without authorization. What makes it irrelevant is that the
> borrowed code is LGPL'ed. And LGPL code can happily be relicensed to GPL,
> as stated in the LGPL text. Thus the kernel code that was borrowed from
> glibc is GPL.

What's relevant here is that it was borrowed from an LGPL *v2*
library into a GPL *v2* project. If a later version of glibc
is licensed solely under GPLv3, that won't affect the borrowed
code that is in the kernel.

If the GPLv2 kernel somehow used an LGPLv3 library, things would
get interesting.

Arnoud

-- 
Arnoud Engelfriet, Dutch & European patent attorney - Speaking only for myself
Patents, copyright and IPR explained for techies: http://www.iusmentis.com/
              Arnoud blogt nu ook: http://blog.iusmentis.com/



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