On Thu, Sep 08, 2005 at 01:20:44PM +0200, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > >He has two basic approaches: > > > >- Telling people that you are not allowed to run GPLd software > > on top of non-GPL operating systems or to ship both together > > on a single medium. > > > > If this was true, most operating systems (including all Linux > > distributions I am aware of) would be illegal. > > It's also interesting to note that, were that to be the case, the GPL > would not be an approved license under the Debian Free Software Guidelines: > > 9. License Must Not Contaminate Other Software > > The license must not place restrictions on other software that is > distributed along with the licensed software. For example, the license > must not insist that all other programs distributed on the same medium > must be free software.
Notice that in this case the GPL only mandate that all software that is linked with the software and on the same media if they are system libraries, have to be free. You are free to put GPLed code with any kind of proprietary code on the same CD, as long as you don't try to link them together. Believe me, the GPL has been written many year ago, and a huge amount of people have been involved with it since then and scrutinized it in every neat details, and there are little doubt left about those issues. To direct you to the GPL FAQ for more detail : http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLInProprietarySystem You cannot incorporate GPL-covered software in a proprietary system. The goal of the GPL is to grant everyone the freedom to copy, redistribute, understand, and modify a program. If you could incorporate GPL-covered software into a non-free system, it would have the effect of making the GPL-covered software non-free too. A system incorporating a GPL-covered program is an extended version of that program. The GPL says that any extended version of the program must be released under the GPL if it is released at all. This is for two reasons: to make sure that users who get the software get the freedom they should have, and to encourage people to give back improvements that they make. However, in many cases you can distribute the GPL-covered software alongside your proprietary system. To do this validly, you must make sure that the free and non-free programs communicate at arms length, that they are not combined in a way that would make them effectively a single program. The difference between this and "incorporating" the GPL-covered software is partly a matter of substance and partly form. The substantive part is this: if the two programs are combined so that they become effectively two parts of one program, then you can't treat them as two separate programs. So the GPL has to cover the whole thing. If the two programs remain well separated, like the compiler and the kernel, or like an editor and a shell, then you can treat them as two separate programs--but you have to do it properly. The issue is simply one of form: how you describe what you are doing. Why do we care about this? Because we want to make sure the users clearly understand the free status of the GPL-covered software in the collection. If people were to distribute GPL-covered software calling it "part of" a system that users know is partly proprietary, users might be uncertain of their rights regarding the GPL-covered software. But if they know that what they have received is a free program plus another program, side by side, their rights will be clear. As well as : http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#TOCGPLIncompatibleLibs Friendly, Sven Luther _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
