Re: bash completion script licensing

[Mike Hommey <mh@glandium.org>]

On Sat, Jan 03, 2009 at 10:06:53AM +0000, Matthew Johnson wrote:
> On Sat Jan 03 09:22, Mike Hommey wrote:
> > On Fri, Jan 02, 2009 at 09:53:06PM +0000, Matthew Johnson wrote:
> > > On Fri Jan 02 19:50, Mike Hommey wrote:
> > > > As the GPL and CDDL are incompatible, as GPL code has some strange
> > > > interactions with other code (library linkage, etc.), and as I'm not
> > > > sure how sourced bash scripts are supposed to be considered in this
> > > > context, I wonder if having such a CDDL bash script would be
> > > > problematic license-wise.
> > > 
> > > There would be no problem with a CDDL bash script per-se, any more than
> > > there would be with a CDDL jpeg or a GPL word document. I suppose you
> > > could argue that since it is modifying the behaviour of one of bash's
> > > built-in functions it counts under the (already dubious) GPL linkage
> > > clause, but I think it would be a stretch. 
> > 
> > I'd add that "require" or "import" in perl, python, ruby, etc. fall
> > under the GPL linkage clause. Why would bash's "source" not ?
> > 
> Yes, but they aren't linking with _perl itself_ but rather with the
> other perl script they are imported to.
> 
> Now, you might not be able to use such a bash completion script if your
> ~/.bashrc is licenced under the GPL (-;
> 
> Also, rereading the OP, the licence of other bash completion scripts
> _might_ be an issue, but I don't think the licence of bash itself is an
> issue.

Well, actually the license of bash itself may be an issue because if I'm
not mistaken, /etc/bash_completion that sources all other bash
completion scripts and has already quite a lot of completions already
implemented, comes with bash. Anyways, even if it didn't come with bash,
the /etc/bash_completion script is still under the GPL (cf. its header).

Now, independently of licenses for any script in /etc/bash_completion.d,
there may be a problem with /etc/bash_completion, so my original
question comes back: does that make a problem?

Mike

PS: Note that if we do have valid arguments, we may well be able to have
the original script be relicensed under a non conflicting license.