On Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 3:26 PM, Jason Grout <jason-s...@creativetrax.com> wrote: > > William Stein wrote: >> On Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 11:36 AM, David Joyner <wdjoy...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> The solution is simple. Have two versions of a package, >>> say >>> >>> my-gpl-package.spkg >>> my-gpl-package-with-all-nongpl-dependencies-autoloaded.spkg. >>> >>> The last differs from the first only in the license and a few lines of >>> the installer script. >> >> That's really simple for you. From *my* point of view as >> the-guy-who-has-to-post-all the spkg's, and make-sure-they-work, and >> complain when they don't, the above just doubles my workload. >> >> Regarding: "I was told that a GPL package must not install a non-GPL >> package." >> >> The above can never legally come up, right? If a program Foo is "GPL" >> and fundamentally depends on a program Bar that is licensed >> GPL-incompatible, then distributing Foo at all violates the GPL right? >> So if the above situation ever came up, I would not host said spkg >> on sagemath.org, since I would be a copyright violator. >> > > > There are functions in Sage (a GPL thing) which fundamentally rely on > non-GPL things (for example, the mathematica interpreter function, or > the interface to nauty, etc.). We still think it's fine to ship Sage, > though.
That's completely orthogonal to what I'm talking about. To say it again: I do not feel comfortable distributing an spkg that can't be built without first building and installing a GPL-incompatible spkg. That's totally different than an spkg (or program like Sage or BASH) that can be installed just fine wtihout the GPL-incompatible program, but can make use of its functionality. > I thought my-gpl-package-with-all-nongpl-dependencies-autoloaded.spkg > didn't mean that you were distributing the gpl and nongpl things > together, but rather that when you installed the gpl package (something > that the *user* is doing, not the distributor), the install script > downloaded and installed the non-gpl program as well. The difference > between the two spkgs would literally be: > > sage -i my-nongpl.spkg > > in the install file. > > Since you are *not* distributing the programs together, I don't see how > the GPL applies. The *user* is the one that is running the command to > download the non-gpl program, and all linking or other dependencies are > happening on the user's machine, at their request. The result is not > being distributed. *Technically* this may be legal because currently I'm not distributing the binary with both spkg's prebuilt. However, I still do not at all feel comfortable with such distribution. In fact, I generally would like to very strongly discourage anybody from creating any so-called GPL'd spkg (or other programs) that cannot be built without linking in a GPL-incompatible non-system library during **compile time**. Though perhaps technically legal, this is against my understanding of the spirit of the GPL and certainly not good for the free software ecosystem. -- William --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
