This website occasionally comments on the complexities of the interaction between Free & Open Source Software (FOSS) licensed under the GPL and other software.

The latest example is from a Newsforge story about Sun's open source Solaris and the relationship of some derivatives to the GPL:

Some Debian developers and community members took issue with Nexenta's [the Solaris derivative] use of GPLed software in conjunction with Sun's Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL), which is considered by some to be incompatible with the GPL. The issue raised by the community is whether Debian's GPLed binaries can be linked to differently licensed libraries. Many users believe it cannot.

Debian founder Ian Murdock expressed dismay over the community response to Nexenta. Murdock, who admitted in the post that perhaps Nexenta did not introduce itself to the Debian community in the best way, said he didn't feel the use was a violation of the license, and in fact was "excited" by the potentials of improving on Solaris.

He cautioned those voicing opposition to Nexenta that if they are right about the licenses then, at best, those pointing the fact out were gaining only a moral victory based on a technicality.

Debian developer Josh Triplett disagreed, saying that "while it is OK for someone to distribute GPLed software for Solaris or any other system with GPL-incompatible libraries, it is not OK for someone to distribute GPLed software 'along with' Solaris and those libraries."

According to Triplett, "Compiling GPLed software against a GPL-incompatible libc and other system libraries does not make those libraries derivative works of the GPLed software -- rather, it makes the binary of the GPLed software a derivative work of the GPL-incompatible libc and other system libraries. Such a binary is non-distributable."

"The intent of the GPL is to prohibit derivative works of GPL code from being proprietary, not to prohibit GPL applications from being linked to GPL-incompatible libraries," Murdock said in response to Triplett. "The former is a goal; the latter is a technicality in pursuit of a goal."

{Alex] Ross [a Nextena developer] admits that Nexenta could have done better in terms of communication, but that Nexenta Systems, the company formed behind the new OS, has done its "due diligence prior to starting work on Nexenta."

"We hope that the common sense will prevail," Ross said. "The claim that one kind of free and open software cannot be distributed with another kind of a free and open software defeats the common sense. It's like saying that 'free' means something else. And the next logical step would be to say that 'peace is war,' and with that get straight into Orwell's 1984."

It’s interpretations like this, folks, that give the GPL its reputation of being viral, and I know how much Richard Stallman hates that word. It’s one thing to ensure that actual derivative works of GPL code are themselves licensed under similar terms; it’s quite another to try to apply the same argument to code that clearly isn’t a derivative work in an attempt to spread free software at any cost.

posted by James DeLong @ 10:00 AM | Software

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