Re: FRR package in Debian violates the GPL licence
On Wed, 20 Mar 2019, David Given wrote:
OTOH the bits of Zebra he pointed out to me are all standalone
modules,
There are further inter-dependencies between those modules. E.g,, things
like the API that provides the route-filtering relies upon the
event-handling system (lib/thread), etc.
You're welcome to try separating out the babeld/ and ldpd/ code that
depends on the GPL code, from the code that does not.
As I wrote before, I actually tried many years ago to do that with the
Quagga babeld port (now babeld/ in FRR), and I could only separate 3
sets of files (3 .c and their 3 corresponding .h).
But, have a go, and see how easy it is and how far you get.
(Also, at this stage, you may not even be able to fix the issue with
this approach anymore - consult a lawyer; but I did try to help them
avoid this mess, years ago).
and FRR would be entirely within their rights to have pulled
these out from the original app and turned them into a GPL library,
*with* public entry points, and then ship that along with their code.
No, you can't just take GPL of code mine, libify it and say it's OK for
it be used in proprietary code, without my agreement.
So... yeah, I dunno. The evidence he supplied wasn't particularly
convincing, but I can see where he's coming from.
Thanks.
regards,
--
Paul Jakma | paul@jakma.org | @pjakma | Key ID: 0xD86BF79464A2FF6A
Fortune:
Excusing bad programming is a shooting offence, no matter _what_ the
circumstances.
-- Linus Torvalds, to the linux-kernel list
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