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Lord Windy posted:My understanding of GPL is if you use any portion of source covered under a GPL license it means that all corresponding source is now covered under a GPL license. It being a copyleft license and all. Stuff like copying source code is clearly use. Stuff like linking to a library and running functions is also use (and why we have the LGPL). But not all dependency relationships in package systems are that sort of use. A shell script that depends on and makes extensive use of the sed command, for instance, does not become GPL simply because sed is. Put more simply, it's quite plausible that capistrano is doing nothing wrong by being MIT-licensed even though it depends on sshkit.
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May 20, 2014 03:12
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Keep in mind that courts and the FSF disagree on what makes one piece of software a derivative from another. The GPL hasn't been that widely tested in the US court.
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May 20, 2014 04:57
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ShadowHawk posted:Stuff like linking to a library and running functions is also use (and why we have the LGPL). In the case of dynamic linking, where the GPL library is not distributed as part of the same unit as the dependent program (vs "mere aggregation" as in a Linux distro), the GPL doesn't impose requirements to my knowledge. The covered code is not "conveyed" as described in sections 5 or 6.
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Jul 16, 2014 23:24
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Subjunctive posted:In the case of dynamic linking, where the GPL library is not distributed as part of the same unit as the dependent program (vs "mere aggregation" as in a Linux distro), the GPL doesn't impose requirements to my knowledge. The covered code is not "conveyed" as described in sections 5 or 6. Even if the GPL were to impose such requirements, they'd be entirely unenforceable, since the creator and distributor of the software isn't doing anything with the GPL'd library that would require the copyright holder's authorisation. The way the GPL (and other copyleft licences) work is by authorising people to make and distribute copies of the work as long as they abide by the licence - if you don't abide by the terms, you don't have the copyright holder's authorisation, and they can sue you if you redistribute the GPL'd library or any derived works. There's no way for such copyleft licences to prevent you from doing things that you're allowed to do anyway under copyright law.
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Jul 17, 2014 09:41
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Jabor posted:There's no way for such copyleft licences to prevent you from doing things that you're allowed to do anyway under copyright law. We're in a magical world in the US now, post-Sega/Oracle/Alice where there is some credence lent to the idea that APIs can have copyright protection, alas. But yes, you're of course right, and that's a stronger reason that the passage I quoted is in error or at least over-broad.
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Jul 17, 2014 09:50
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