Erast Benson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Joerg position is clear:
>
> """It may be the main point that people fear that compiling cdrtools
> creates unredistibutable binaries. I see no reason why binaries may
> be unredistibutable as I don't see any contradictory requirements
> from CDDL/GPL. Both licenses are source licenses and require to make the
> source available in case a binary is distributed. This is no
> contradiction but just the same requirement."""
>
> I would like to hear FSF position on this matter and somehow I have a
> feeling their interpretation of GPL license is different from what is
> claimed here. Eben Moglen, General Counsel for the Free Software
> Foundation, noted that he always believed that GPLv2 should be
> interpreted in the way GPLv3 now makes explicit.
Thank you Erast for pointing this out.
The main problem that prevents people to understand the GPL correctly, is that
there are too many wrong interpretations in the net and even the FAQ from the
FSF is not 100% correct.
The main weapon of a lawyer or person who works on contracts is the word.
If you like to play in that league, you need to be able to deal with that
weapon!
In other words, you need to read the GPL carefully and thoroughly many times
until you understand every corner of the text.
Sometimes I get the impressuion that native English speakers don't do that
because they believe that they understand what they read in the first attempt.
It is obvious that the FSD does (at least internally) not have a different
understanding of the GPL [1]. It may however be wrong to ask e.g. RMS because
he is known to reply in unusable ways on similar questions. He either points to
the FSF GPL FAQ (which is not 100% correct) or even answers in a oracle.....
The best idea is to ask Eben Moglen, he is university professor on law and I
know from previous private conversations with him that he answers in a useful
way when asked specifically.
[1] Note that in case that the FSF would not agree with my interpretation
of the GPL (the GPL is a asymmetric license that allows GPL projects
to use non-GPL code), the FSF would definitely sue Veritas. Veritas does
the same with GNU tar since many years and as it seems that RMS
believes that GNU tar is some kind of "crown jewels" of the FSF. It is
most unlikely that the FSF would tolerate a GPL vilolation for GNU tar.
I am in hope that people from Debian read the GPL several times thoroughly
before we continue the discussion. I am sure that they then agree with me.
Jörg
--
EMail:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (uni)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/old/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily
