Re: filebench: bison generated parser + CDDL
Am Samstag, 2. Juni 2012 schrieb Mark Weyer:
> On Fri, Jun 01, 2012 at 01:45:06PM +0200, Martin Steigerwald wrote:
> > Am Montag, 7. Mai 2012 schrieb Mark Weyer:
> > > Just a quick note: If you are right about the incompatibility of CDDL-1
> > > and GPLv3 (others on this list will know if you are), then the
> > > combined work is non-free: Its license terms discriminate against a
> > > field of endeavour, namely developing a parser generator.
> >
> > I don´t understand this.
> >
> > I understand the exception
> >
> > | As a special exception, you may create a larger work that contains
> > | part or all of the Bison parser skeleton and distribute that work
> > | under terms of your choice, so long as that work isn't itself a
> > | parser generator using the skeleton or a modified version thereof
> > | as a parser skeleton. Alternatively, if you modify or redistribute
> > | the parser skeleton itself, you may (at your option) remove this
> > | special exception, which will cause the skeleton and the resulting
> > | Bison output files to be licensed under the GNU General Public
> > | License without this special exception.
> >
> > so that it allows distributing the software under any other license as
> > long as the generated parser isn´t a parser generator in itself.
> >
> > I don´t think that the parser in here is a parser generator. As far as I
> > understand parser_gram.c and parser_gram.h just parses loadable workload
> > descriptions.
>
> It is less clear than I thought.
[…]
> The true question is, of course, whether a court would judge in favour of
> the exception's letter or its intent.
>
> If it judges in favour of its intent: Taking the CDDL'ed filebench for A
> and some modified version B of A, by copyleft (of both the
> GPL-and-exception and the CDDL) we have the same license situation in B as
> in A. Now if B is as above, the exception is not applicable and thus
> (assuming that GPL and CDDL are incompatible) B is not distributable. Thus
> the combined licenses forbid distribution of (some) modified versions and
> the package is non-free.
>
> If the court judges in favour of the exception's letter, then your upstream
> can put parser_gram.c and parser_gram.h under the CDDL and everything is
> fine (You can't do that yourself, because
> A: the exception grants that right only to the creator of the larger work
> and B: if upstream does not exercise the right of the exception, then they
> do not have the right to distribute filebench under anything other than
> the GPL.)
>
> I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, et cetera.
Thanks a lot for your detailed explaination.
I forwarded the question upstream and to the FSF licensing team. (See my other
mail, I kept debian-legal in Cc.)
Ciao,
--
Martin Steigerwald - teamix GmbH - http://www.teamix.de
gpg: 19E3 8D42 896F D004 08AC A0CA 1E10 C593 0399 AE90
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