Steve Langasek <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Mon, Jul 29, 2002 at 10:03:50PM +0200, Sunnanvind Fenderson wrote: > > I know some people who're thinking of moving their proprietary > > products to GPL instead, but they want to be able to link to some > > jakarta jar-files. (obnoxiously ad-clause-licensed, iirc) > > > I suggested using the GPL with an exception clause (since the company > > is sole copyright holder of the software at the moment). > > > b) Would they be allowed to link to real GPL stuff like the readline > > library? > > > They wouldn't be able to include GPL-ed code in their GPL-ed (with > > exception) code, right? > > Only the copyright holders of libreadline can grant a license exception > to link their code against GPL-incompatible code. This likewise applies > to any other GPL code that they do not hold copyright for.
Okay. But program X, licensed under GPL-with-exception can link to both jakarta and to GPL-ed stuff. Can it link to both at the same time? No? > > This being written in java complicates things even more. They link to > > Suns standard java libraries, also. > > Mmm, AFAIK the Java ABI is fairly well standardized; if the features > they need are also available from a GPL-compatible jre implementation, > then this should be technically indistinguishable from linking against > Sun's Java classes. Okay. I think they'll look into this, then. > If their code can't be built against the free Java class > implementations, then it's definitely not possible for anyone to provide > binaries referencing other GPL code. However, this is probably > secondary to the use of the GPL-incompatible Jakarta code. > > Of course, they can allow others to do anything they want to allow with > /their/ software (including things not normally permitted under the GPL > if they grant a license exception). > > ISTR that someone was working on a BSD-licensed reimplementation of > libreadline, btw. Yes, libeditline. But readline was only one of the examples. We'd really like this company to become a free software company, and one of the many selling points is that they would get access to a huge codebase of copylefted code. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
