Sorry, that's slightly more confrontational than I intended. What I mean is: All of us are probably not lawyers, and certainly not endowed with the legal specialization that goes into IP law. If we were, we'd be busy doing that instead of writing software.
The law is extremely complicated, with zillions of edge cases. If a lawyer with no computer programming experience were to read the source code of some part of the linux kernel, and tell you how it works, would you just believe them? I'd require a test, at least, or the advice of someone a bit more experienced with that particular piece of complexity. In legal matters, test cases are expensive. And what you're describing has never been tested in court. In fact, editline and LGPL both exist because there are many in the Free Software and Open Source communities who believe that you are quite incorrect in how you're interpreting the legal definition of "linking", and they'd rather not spend money being the test case. So, until there is a test case, and then probably a few more (since legal matters are often not settled by one test), it's up in the air, and none of us are really all that qualified to make such definitive statements. On Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 11:30 AM, Isaac Schlueter <[email protected]> wrote: > Austin, > > Cool story. Where'd you go to law school? > > On Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 3:55 PM, Austin William Wright > <[email protected]> wrote: >> It is a clear-cut thing: "Linking" in the context of copyright means to >> embed another program (compiled or otherwise) inside your program and >> distribute it. >> >> The GPL does not decide when it gets to be applicable, all it gets to do is >> decide when to grant permission to distribute. If you're not distributing >> GPL-licensed programs, the GPL doesn't apply to you. Period. >> >> On Saturday, December 15, 2012 5:47:08 PM UTC-7, David Herron wrote: >>> >>> On Sat, Dec 15, 2012 at 1:16 PM, Jake Verbaten <[email protected]> wrote: >>>> >>>> > The virality of *GPL licenses as node modules has never been tested in >>>> court, so it's unclear what the ramifications are. >>>> >>>> To clarify, if I were to release a MIT module onto github or npm or some >>>> other distribution channel which has a dependency on an GPL module checked >>>> into node_modules into git. (so it's in my code). >>>> >>>> There would have to be a court case to determine whether or not I am >>>> allowed to licence my top level code under MIT instead of being forced to >>>> use GPL because a dependency is GPL? >>> >>> >>> Earlier Martin Cooper raised the question of what does it mean to "link" >>> in JavaScript. That wasn't just an idle question, because IIRC the GPL >>> viralness kicks in when you "link" code together. In JavaScript there's no >>> "linking" involved (because it's not compiled) and with Node.js modules >>> there's no subclassing ... etc .. soooo... >>> >>> Are you sure it's a good idea to check dependencies into your own source >>> tree? That doesn't sound like a good practice to me. Why not let npm take >>> care of the dependencies? >>> >>> I would think that when you "npm install" a package, and npm installs all >>> the dependencies, that the binding is loose enough to not trigger any actual >>> concern. >>> >>> But, yeah, okay, it's not terribly well a clear-cut thing. Ah.. maybe an >>> analogy could be drawn from packaging policies in, say, the Debian/Ubuntu >>> projects? >>> >>> + David Herron, nodejs.davidherron.com >>> >> -- >> Job Board: http://jobs.nodejs.org/ >> Posting guidelines: >> https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/Mailing-List-Posting-Guidelines >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >> Groups "nodejs" group. >> To post to this group, send email to [email protected] >> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >> [email protected] >> For more options, visit this group at >> http://groups.google.com/group/nodejs?hl=en?hl=en -- Job Board: http://jobs.nodejs.org/ Posting guidelines: https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/Mailing-List-Posting-Guidelines You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "nodejs" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/nodejs?hl=en?hl=en
