On Friday, 13 January 2017 at 01:27:02 UTC, Chris Wright wrote:
You offer an API and someone decides to build on it using the
GPL -- no trouble there; your work is not a derivative of
theirs, so their copyright cannot place restrictions on your
work.
That makes no sense(it's obvious by the definition of derivative
so you are not saying anything meaningful/useful). Obviously if
you build an independent work you are free to chose a license and
no one building any work off of yours or not can cause you
problems.
You build against an open standard and the only implementation
is GPL -- your work is a derivative of the standard, not
necessarily the GPL'd work.
That depends. The standard could be GPL's too. Anything can be
copyrighted and licensed how the creator wants as long as it is
legal. In any case, that says nothing about a single work.
You build against an open standard with an MIT licensed
implementation and someone else builds a GPL implementation --
no trouble there; your work is not a derivative of theirs, so
their copyright cannot place restrictions on your work.
You haven't really said anything relevant to the post.
The issue is with how the GPL defines proper use of pre-existing
works. The ultimately point is that they arbitrarily decide how a
work uses another based on "fork and exec" and "library". My
point is that those are ultimately artificial because whether we
call a function/app through a library or through a command line,
they are effectively the same(the difference being
performance/convenience, which is the whole point of loading a
library vs using the command line).
They admit this in the gpl FAQ(if you read it you will see) but
the fact that they still create arbitrary division suggests the
license is somewhat meaningless/incompetent.
Licenses should be more specific in their terminology and their
behaviors and effects rather than using arbitrary divisions.
Also, while not proof, the fact that the majority of donations to
the foundation go to the lawyers(if true) also suggest that it is
somewhat of a scam(at the very least, something is fishy).
