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On Saturday 28 June 2008, Daniel Iliev wrote: |
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> It seems to me that you are obliged to publish cdrtools under the GNU |
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> GPL until cdrtools contains at least one piece of work which is |
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> licensed under the GNU GPL. Actually that is what the GNU GPL is all |
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> about - to force you to keep the source of a given project open if |
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> you had used any GPLd work for that project. |
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To understand how to use the GPL it is necessary to understand what it |
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was designed to do: |
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Create an entire body of free code that can never be made un-free. |
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That entire body is GNU. RMS says so in one of his many essays and faqs |
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on the subject[1]. The original intent is obviously for people who want |
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to contribute to GNU - they must license their code for GNU under GPL, |
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and their code then becomes a coherent part of something much larger. |
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Picking and choosing bits of code here and there is liable to get one in |
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trouble with incompatible licenses, as this is not the original intent. |
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> How can this be achieved? Simply the GPL applies itself to the whole |
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> system if even the smallest part of the system was licenced under it. |
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Yes, that is a side effect. But I don't think the intent was to infect |
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other code with GPL due to the presence of GPL'ed code, as GNU was |
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started to replace existing proprietary Unixes. More like new GPL code |
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is added to the GNU that already exists. |
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Stunningly obvious conclusion: |
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Don't mix and match GPL code with other code (except BSD where this |
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problem doesn't arise) |
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-- |
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Alan McKinnon |
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alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com |
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-- |
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gentoo-user@l.g.o mailing list |
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