FC4 or FC5

[Les Mikesell]

On Tue, 2006-06-20 at 17:46 +0200, Ingemar Nilsson wrote:

> > The point is that no copyrighted material covered by the GPL material is
> > being distributed.  The end user has his own copy of the GPL'd material
> > and the right to use that copy any way he wants.  Yet the FSF claims the
> > right to prohibit distribution of this other code containing no parts
> > under their license by someone with no reason to have ever agreed to
> > their license.
> 
> But if your program fails to work if you remove the GPL-covered code, there
> is no question that it depends on it.

Of course there is a question about it.  It doesn't depend on it to
exist.  I can write something using the description of a library I've
never seen.  No reasonable interpretation of copyright law says that
I can't copy this entirely original work anywhere I want.  Whether
it runs or not in any or all of those places isn't particularly 
relevant.  The FSF interpretation says otherwise.

>  And if it depends on GPL-covered
> code, it has to be licensed under the GPL as well. Simple as that.

It's not simple at all.  The program may run only when linked to
another person's own copy of the library in question.  That's
the way copyright and every other license works.   Note that there
is no restriction against writing and using your own copy of this
work, or hiring someone to write it specifically for you.  The claim
is that this original work can't be distributed because it won't run
without the GPL'd part - as though running is some kind of requirement
for code distribution or that copyright is somehow dependent on code
working correctly...

> If, on the other hand, the GPL-covered code can be readily swapped for a
> compatible library that is covered by another license, the issue is less
> clear, but that might just be me.

Then the FSF claim is even more obviously nonsense.  But suppose you
don't have a copy of the library yourself when you write the original
part and don't know the terms of its license.  Or you can't disprove
the existence of a similar, differently licensed library.

> But then, GNU libraries that have
> commercial equivalents are mostly (always?) licensed under the LGPL
> instead, so it is usually not a problem.

The gmp library that raised the issue has since been changed to
LGPL, partly because of the bad publicity from the RIPEM dispute
but perhaps also because the FSF knows the claim doesn't have much
chance of surviving a challenge.  But, the same issue applies to
code that allows dynamically loaded plugins under different licenses
to run in the same process.  If any part is GPL'd, none of the
others can have any different restrictions.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
   lesmikesell at gmail.com