From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id KAA06599; Mon, 25 Oct 2004 10:00:34 +0200 (MET DST) X-Authentication-Warning: pauillac.inria.fr: majordomo set sender to owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr using -f Received: from nez-perce.inria.fr (nez-perce.inria.fr [192.93.2.78]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id KAA07301 for ; Mon, 25 Oct 2004 10:00:33 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from will.iki.fi (will.iki.fi [217.169.64.20]) by nez-perce.inria.fr (8.13.0/8.13.0) with ESMTP id i9P80Xqv022536 for ; Mon, 25 Oct 2004 10:00:33 +0200 Received: from [10.0.20.56] (fa-3-0-0.fw.exomi.com [217.169.64.99]) by will.iki.fi (Postfix) with ESMTP id 94E3CC3; Mon, 25 Oct 2004 11:00:26 +0300 (EEST) Message-ID: <417CB289.1010700@exomi.com> Date: Mon, 25 Oct 2004 11:00:09 +0300 From: Ville-Pertti Keinonen User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 0.8 (X11/20041016) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: David Brown Cc: caml-list@inria.fr Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Announce: Schoca-0.2.3 released References: <1098642597.3075.32.camel@pelican.wigram> <20041025025832.GA1582@old.davidb.org> <20041025.123834.26988978.garrigue@math.nagoya-u.ac.jp> <20041025050127.GA3599@old.davidb.org> In-Reply-To: <20041025050127.GA3599@old.davidb.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Miltered: at nez-perce with ID 417CB2A1.000 by Joe's j-chkmail (http://j-chkmail.ensmp.fr)! X-Loop: caml-list@inria.fr X-Spam: no; 0.00; caml-list:01 gpl:01 gpl:01 offtopic:01 end-user:01 demanded:01 readline:01 non-gpl:01 crappy:01 linked:01 linked:01 kernel:01 modules:02 essentially:02 wrote:03 Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk David Brown wrote: >The GPL only coveres distribution, not execution. GPL code can be linked >with even proprietary code as long as the result isn't distributed at all. > > This is getting fairly offtopic, but I thought it might be worth mentioning that this is not quite so clear-cut. While you're essentially correct, the above could also be interpreted to mean that you can get around the GPL by having the end-user link GPL-incompatible software against a GPL component. According to RMS, this is not acceptable, even for a minor, optional component (he demanded that CLISP change its licensing due to the optional ability to link against GNU readline; the author changed to GPL). On the other hand, a similar practice is commonly accepted for Linux kernel modules. Consider a situation where someone created a compatible but non-GPL replacement for some major GPL library, and GPL-incompatible software that could be linked against that library...or the original GPL library. Lets say the original GPL library is sufficiently better that most users link against it. The above could be extended to turn any GPL program into a library first, then create a crappy compatible library... I really don't know what the legal interpretation of that would be. ------------------- To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr Archives: http://caml.inria.fr Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs FAQ: http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/ Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners