samba license change
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell at gmail.com
Thu Oct 11 14:55:04 UTC 2007
Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
>
> IANAL, but IMHO this could be interpreted as a license violation of
> the gplv3 samba distributed with GPLv2 foo.rpm that links against it.
>
> (of course one could argue foo is not really derived from gplv3 samba
> since it has been built against gplv2 samba, but gplv3 samba+gplv2 foo
> is certainly derived from gplv3 samba, and that's what we'd be
> distributing)
I think there is a very good argument, going back to the FSF opinion on
the gmp vs, fgmp libraries, that as long as a working alternative
library exists, code linking to one of those versions can't be
considered a derivative of it in the copyright sense.
> IMHO the original message I was responding to ("Thanks god we don't
> have automated rebuilds") is dead wrong. The version against which
> code was build or rebuild does not matter overmuch. The version we
> distribute linking binaries with does.
If you have the right to distribute each component separately and the
existence of a usable gplv2 copy prevents things that happen to link to
the gplv3 version from being considered a derivative work, what's the
problem - at least until changes make the libraries incompatible?
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell at gmail.com
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