(Sorry, this isn't really a response to your mail; I don't think our main interest is on "who can apply what license", it's "can babeld source, using libzebra, legally be under MIT")
On Fri, May 22, 2015 at 09:53:35AM -0400, Jim Gettys wrote: > A few files from babel were modified to call into libzebra The crux of the dispute here was that Paul believes that modification made the resulting babeld a derivative of libzebra. I.e., Paul believes Kunihiro Ishiguro (original creator of libzebra) can sue Juliusz because Juliusz is violating the GPL by publishing his babeld (MIT) that is derivative of libzebra (GPL). My uninformed opinion is that incorporating function names and #include statements does not make something a derivative work. > I will talk to Scott again next week. Can you ask him about the above? (And, maybe, the below, but that's mostly curiosity on my end:) There's an interesting connection to the current Oracle v. Google lawsuit here. Paul is essentially advocating Oracle, arguing for strong copyright on APIs. Except, Oracle's claim is in a better position than Paul's, because Google actually copied (significant?) parts of the API. On babeld, we're talking about just *using* the API. If Oracle loses, there is no way Paul's position would be upholdable, because Oracle losing would imply we could just copy the libzebra API (or neccessary parts of it) and release it under MIT. If Oracle half-wins, gets copyright but the court deems Google's use Fair Use, babeld's is also Fair Use. If Oracle wins strongly, there is a *chance* that babeld might be GPL-infringent. But still babeld isn't copying or changing libzebra's APIs, it's just using them. I.e. a court would need to interpret copyright yet stronger *again* to see a problem with babeld. (And if Oracle wins strongly, that's a major earthquake in the IT industry to begin with... and it'd probably result in a change of law in that regard.) -David P.S.: I find it rather amusing that Paul keeps citing his historical advice from lawyers at Sun. If it doesn't hold up in court, I'd say that wasn't "advice" as much as wishful thinking, on Sun/Oracle's end. _______________________________________________ Quagga-dev mailing list [email protected] https://lists.quagga.net/mailman/listinfo/quagga-dev
