Peter wrote: It's nice to see that you are as polite as ever. Always refreshing to see someone who spends so much time in understanding what others say, and effort in making his objections so elegantly and tactfully heard. > The intention is clear: It is indeed. > So I think that your thinking is not quite ok and the GPL is quite ok > and strong enough in this area. But what matters is not what you or I think, but what will a judge think. That is why the intentions, clear though they may be, also matter not.
The GPL derives its legal status from being a copyright license. Any time you need the copyright holder's permission to do something (distribute, derive work from, etc.), the GPL embodies that permission. Therein also lies the limitation - any time you do not need the copyright holder's permission, the GPL has no effect. The law is very clear on this point. You need the copyright holder's permission when you create derived works (and other stuff, which is not in the focus of this discussion). In order to answer the question of whether I can do X that needs Y, where Y is GPL and X is not, we need to answer one important question - is X "derived work" of Y? If it is, I'm not allowed. If it's not, I am allowed. Simple. Well, not so simple. There is no clear cut definition of what constitutes, and what does not constitute, derived work. We have some clear cut cases at the fringes. It's obvious that Word is not derived work of Wine. It's obvious that a modified scheduler is derived work of the kernel. Practically anything in between is open to interpretation. I have mine, the FSF has theirs. You have yours, but the only one that matters is the judge's. > again, the API must not originate outside the GPL community for this > to be true Leaving all practical problems of what a "GPL community" is, there is one binding precedence that is applicable, at least for US jurisdiction. It says this: APIs are not copyrightable. In other words, a functional description of a set of functions with their semantics cannot be protected by copyright. It follows that it cannot have a GPL license, and it's easy to see from there that your above statement will, likely, not hold water should it be tested in court. You simply cannot GPL an interface (and an API is an "Application Programmer Interface"). > - because you are linking against an API in fact, not against a library Which is precisely why, if you add to it the above paragraph, the GPL does not apply to you, even if there is only one implementation around and it is GPL. > If this p***es you off, go buy an island and write your own version of > causality ;-) (starting at about $40,000): That's ok, I refuse on principle to be p-asterisk-asterisk-asterisk-ed off by rude language, and I have other uses for $40K (though the idea is tempting for unrelated reasons). Shachar -- Shachar Shemesh Lingnu Open Source Consulting ltd. Have you backed up today's work? http://www.lingnu.com/backup.html ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
