Re: [gentoo-dev] Contributed ebuilds and copyright questions

[Rich Freeman]

On Tue, Oct 25, 2016 at 8:54 AM, Ulrich Mueller <ulm@g.o> wrote:
>
> Also, calling eclass functions could be considered linking. It is not
> entirely clear to me if e.g. a binpkg built with a CDDL licensed
> ebuild calling GPL licensed eclasses would be distributable at all.

Honestly, I think the GPL linking argument is a difficult one at best,
but setting that aside I think it is even harder to consider calling a
function in an interpreted language "linking."  Is it a violation of
the GPL to execute a GPL binary from a bash script that is
GPL-incompatible?  Heck, is it a violation of the other license for
the GPL bash interpreter to read and execute the non-GPL lines in the
script?

To me linking and word processing are actually on a continuum and I
think it is hard to draw a line and say that the GPL prohibits one and
not the other, but if you are going to try to draw a line I think
interpreted languages are going to fall on the safe side of it.

I guess it comes down to what are the essential elements of linking
that leads one to believe that it constitutes a violation of copyright
to do it without explicit permission?  If there is agreement on that
(which I think is harder to achieve than some seem to think), then the
question becomes whether calling a function in an interpreted language
contains those elements.

>
> So can we be strict there, please? Contributed ebuilds should have our
> standard copyright header, or they will be rejected.
>

Certainly this is the current policy.  The draft policy envisions a
table of licenses for each project, and we of course can make that
table as restrictive or free as desired.  I do think it makes sense to
whitelist licenses individually by project for the very sorts of
reasons that you bring up.

-- 
Rich