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

[Rich Freeman]

On Tue, Oct 25, 2016 at 9:56 AM, Alexis Ballier <aballier@g.o> wrote:
> On Tue, 25 Oct 2016 09:17:08 -0400
> Rich Freeman <rich0@g.o> wrote:
>
>> 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?
>
> The concept is "derived work": If your script cannot work without the
> GPL binary, then it is derived work.
>

I don't think any well-recognized organization argues that scripts are
derived works of the binaries they call.  Besides, literally the only
thing about the binary that a script contains is the name of the
binary, and some command line options.  This seems like it is going
even further than suggesting that APIs be copyrightable.

-- 
Rich