From: mbk@lyapunov.ucsd.edu (Matt Kennel) Subject: Re: What would people think of binary-only software on Linux? Date: 1 Mar 1993 08:27:10 GMT
bir7@leland.Stanford.EDU (Ross Biro) writes:
: I maintain that the act of linking the proprietary .o file into
: the GPL'ed kernel would be a violation of the GPL.
Only if this combined GPL original and proprietary hybrid were distributed,
right? I can take a GPL program and modify it all I want, and as long
as I don't give it to anybody, I don't have to make the source available.
: Otherwise I could get
: around the GPL by simply distributing my derived work in three parts.
: 1) gpl.o all the gpl'ed parts ( I would include source for this.)
: 2) proprietary.o (the proprietary part which you are not
: aloud to re-distribute.)
: 3) an install script to link them together.
What if only #2 and #3 were sold, and the user got
the first part from omewhere else.
: Furthermore since I would be providing materials whose sole use and
: purpose is to help people to violate a contract, if the copyright
: holders on the GPL'ed software didn't sue me, my customers would.
Only if the customers distributed the combination. Can't people
modify GPL software on their own anyway they want, if they don't
give it away? Isn't that one of the purposes of the GPL, to enable
users to hack on their own software?
Suppose this vendor is supplying device drivers for a GPL-Free OS.
The vendor isn't trying to sell My_Proprietary_OS which is really
People's_Republic_of_FSF_OS plus a little cosmetic hacks.
: I think one of the best arguments that this is the case is that Next,
: Lucid and all the other companies which have modified GPL'ed software
: have not tried it. Furthermore this is exactly the case that RMS
: talked about in the message that was posted earlier.
Suppose the GPL'ed kernel supported loadable device drivers. Now
does anything that this kernel loads have to be GPLized? What's
the difference between a "loaddrv" and "exec"?
What about a microkernel? Does providing an entirely new program
to implement a new filesystem violate the GPL? This seems like
an important issue to resolve, considering the nature of GNU-OS.
What if the GNU-OS were to link-in at midnight every executable on the
disk with another GPLized virus-stub. Would that 'liberate' all the
programs in the name of Chairman Moe? :-)
: Basically the benefits to be gained by attempting to get around the
: GPL in such a fasion are not worth the risk.
On the whole I think that people will act reasonably to abide by
the wishes of the FSF as long as the FSF acts reasonably itself.
So far it has: proprietary programs edited with 'emacs' or compiled with
'gcc' are not forcibly "emancipated".
: Ross Biro bir7@leland.stanford.edu
: Member League for Programming Freedom (LPF)
: mail lpf@uunet.uu.net to protect your Freedom
: