Re: Plugins for non-free software in orig.tar.gz

[Rudolf Polzer <divVerent@alientrap.org>]

On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 11:14:11PM -0500, Christofer C. Bell wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 12:38 AM, Rudolf Polzer <divVerent@alientrap.org>
> wrote:
> 
> 
>     Do I then get into trouble with the GPL, as the source tarball contains
>     code
>     that links to non-GPL compatible code?
> 
> 
> You can't get in trouble for anything you do with your own code to which you
> own the copyright.  You only run into issues when you do something with code
> someone else holds copyright to.  In this case, you're free to link OpenSSL
> against your own software, that belongs to you, to which you own the copyright.

Sure, _I_ cannot get into trouble for it. I meant to ask whether the source
tarball actually fulfills the source code requirement of the GPL.

>     This BTW affects the FreeBSD project too
> 
> 
> The FreeBSD Foundation is free to do whatever they like with code they own the
> copyright to.  They must adhere to any licenses for code they include in
> FreeBSD for which they do not own the copyright.

Right, the FreeBSD foundation is not affected by this. A vendor using the
FreeBSD kernel might, though.  Assume a vendor uses a FreeBSD kernel with
integrated ext2fs file system. Then he has to release the full kernel source,
as the GPL applies to the combined work.

An easy way for such a vendor would be to just make a tarball of the exact
/usr/src/sys directory he build the kernel in. However, this also contains
sources that are distributed under the CDDL. Does the vendor then have to
identify and take out these sources, or can he release the tarball as is, and
it is enough that these sources are not compiled by the vendor's configuration?

(Why I am asking this in the same thread, is that my main question is actually
pretty much similar - it is about non-free sources included in the .orig.tar.gz
which are not compiled into the binary).

Best regards,

Rudolf Polzer