Posted on 06/25/2007 7:01:52 AM PDT by N3WBI3
Of course this is all bull, as we know Groklaw is an IBM astroturf campaign. :)
There is allot of president and a ton of faqs out there explaining what this means. Part of the reason, I believe, the license was written as it was is to make sure it is flexible with the times. So unless your using gpl code in a her to for brand spanking new manner the question has been answered. And if your method is new all you need to do is *then* get an answer and the license it self does not need to be updated.
This is highlighted by the fact that RMS is trying to update the GPL for more political then technical reasons and that, if anything, will be the undoing of the GPL.
LOL Jokelaw gets more desperate every day, this report is almost 5 years old now. The latest reports from IDC and Gartner show Windows revenue as a percentage growing faster than Linux now, almost amazing considering what a small percentage of users have Linux to begin with.
AFAIK, the FSF does not provide answers. You have to do it and see if you get a complaint. That is too much risk.
The risk of someone saying ‘your violating this or that’ is evenly held by all licenses. Hence SCO’s lawsuit with IBM and MS constant patent threats.
btw can you give me an example?
The main one is the linking issue. The general wisdom is the difference between static and dynamic linking, most people think static is what triggers "derivative" but dynamic doesn't. But Stallman sees them both as the same. So if my product contains no code of his GPL product, but dynamically links to it, my product must also be GPL. That is even if what I linked to was a tiny GPL library to perform a minor function of my larger program, and that library resides, unmodified by me, in a separate file on the distribution medium (which you would think invokes the last paragraph of section 2).
The MPL is much better on this. You must make your code MPL only if it is a modification (a true derivative work) of current MPL code.
I can't see that with the MPL. They are very clear on what constitutes a derivative work. Of course, there's no ambiguity in the BSD license.
uggg now your going to make me defend RMS, at least I have grease monkey:
“Progress Software put out a press release that suggested MySQL AB was making such a claim, but that was not so. The GPL violation involved static linking of non-free (at the time) code with the mySQL code and distributing the result as a single binary.” - RMS
The problem he has had is not with the linking but the releasing of the closed source code along with the GPL code as one binary package. If you release your product and have the end users installer do the linking at install or build time your free and clear.
Stallman/Moglen make no differentiation between static and dynamic linking for this purpose. Other high-profile people like Larry Rosen of the Open Source Initiative disagree on the scope of the GPL pertaining to what is a derivative work.
BTW, I was behind the times. The FSF will certify, but for a price.
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