Re: cdrtools
On Saturday 12 August 2006 02:47 am, Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote: Daniel Schepler [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: According to the GPL, section 0: The act of running the Program is not restricted... And since dynamic linking is done at the time the program is run, this would appear to me to be what applies. In particular, it appears to me that you could satisfy the GPL and still dynamically link against a non-free library, and distribute both, by invoking the mere aggregation clause of section 2. This does not mean that anything that happens when you run the program is not restricted. For example, the act of running GNU cp and sed is not restricted, but that cann't possibly mean that the GPL gives you carte blanche to go ahead and violate the GPL through use of cp and sed. I'm afraid I don't see what your point is, here. Of course the GPL allowing me to use a GPL'd httpd to distribute non-free software doesn't automatically mean I would be blameless if I used it to distribute, say, a non-free program foo linked against libmad. The point, I think, is that distributing such a thing as the non-free binary of foo along with a package of a shared libmad is essentially the same as distributing a binary with libmad linked in statically, which is clearly disallowed. Both are just different ways of distributing the combined work of foo + libmad. -- Daniel Schepler -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: GPL question [Was: Re: cdrtools]
On Friday 11 August 2006 18:10 pm, Goswin von Brederlow wrote: I believe that the totaly interchangable option of specifying -static or not should not change the free-ness of the source or resulting binary. So if you link static and you agree that it is a violation that way then you should not be able to get away with it by linking dynamically. The GPL is viral in nature and specificaly made to work across linking boundaries. People should not be able to add non-free portitons to the source by hiding them in libraries. I agree, but then should and is sometimes disagree. But after thinking about it some more, I believe a dynamically linked binary together with the corresponding shared libraries should be considered as a distribution method for the complete program that gets assembled in a common address space. Consider for example the case of EvilCo, back before dynamic linking was widespread, trying to use a GPL'd library in their non-free program. They try to get around the GPL by distributing their compiled program code in a single .o file in a mere aggregate along with the GPL library .a file, and ask users to link the program themselves. This is obviously bogus; they've just created an alternate means of distribution of the resulting binary, and so the binary itself must be distributable under the terms of the GPL, which it isn't. And the case of a dynamically linked executable with shared libraries is almost exactly the same as this scenario, only it's the system dynamic linker doing the work instead of the user doing it manually. Anyway, as somebody else pointed out, this is off-topic for debian-devel, and I apologize. Please direct any replies to debian-legal (too bad kmail doesn't let me set Followup-To afaik). -- Daniel Schepler -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
