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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.cs.su.oz.au!metro!metro!munnari.OZ.AU!spool.mu.edu!howland.erols.net!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!insync!uunet!in3.uu.net!194.221.49.2!news.julia.de!kernel.panic.julia.de!ralf From: ralf@Julia.DE (Ralf Baechle) Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.linux.networking,comp.os.linux.setup,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.unix.bsd.misc,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy Subject: Re: Linux vs whatever Date: 1 Feb 1997 01:50:41 GMT Organization: Phoenix .d.i.g.i.t.a.l. Lines: 47 Message-ID: <5cu7hh$umu$1@alles.intern.julia.de> References: <32DFFEAB.7704@usa.net> <5qC7y0gTzDLB091yn@ibm.net> <5ciraf$gs@cynic.portal.ca> <32EE0B70.1657@ml.com> <5claa2$jq1@cynic.portal.ca> <5clvmp$jjs@pulp.ucs.ualberta.ca> NNTP-Posting-Host: kernel.panic.julia.de To: jgg@gpu4.srv.ualberta.ca (J Gunthorpe) Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.misc:155822 comp.os.linux.networking:67053 comp.os.linux.setup:95186 comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc:5839 comp.unix.bsd.misc:2203 comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy:51693 comp.os.os2.advocacy:265233 In article <5clvmp$jjs@pulp.ucs.ualberta.ca>, jgg@gpu4.srv.ualberta.ca (J Gunthorpe) writes: |> Curt Sampson (cjs@cynic.portal.ca) wrote: |> : On Tue, 28 Jan 1997, tethys wrote: |> : |> : > How? By placing it under the GPL, they ensured it will be free for |> : > anyone to use, and port to new platforms if desired. |> : |> : Only as a separate program. It can't, for example, be integrated |> : into WinZip or PKZIP (without forcing the author to give away full |> : source code for WinZip or PKZIP), which would automatically give |> : it much, much wider distribution. Nor could a word processor be |> : able automatically to gzip files, for the same reason. |> : |> : It may be reasonable in some people's minds to say that if you take |> : a one thousand line GPL'd program and make fifty lines of changes, |> : you must give away those changes. But I should think hardly anyone |> : would think it reasonable to say that if you integrate five hundred |> : lines of GPL'd source into a ten thousand line program you wrote |> : yourself, you must now give away those ten thousand lines of code |> : you wrote. Yet that's exactly what the GPL says. |> |> Hm, that does sound pretty bad, and does limit the usefullness of the |> GLP'd code. However I have a question, if you take a GPL'd code base and |> make it into a library (shared or otherwise) and then link to that library |> is it required to distribute the code of the new executable? |> |> If this is so, then how can anyone make any money in linux? I assume stuff |> like the X-Windows libraries, shared C libraries, Sockets libs etc etc are |> all GPL'd? (In which case wouldn't NetScape, ID and others be violating |> the GPL by releasing ported code that runs on linux without source?) There is also the LGPL for libraries. Essentially the same conditions for the library itself. You just have to include the object files of the non- GPL/LGPL part such that it is possible to reload the executable with a modified library version. A special case are things like libgcc.a and the startup code of GNU libc. For libgcc.a the license is more or less Berkeley like (including the source wouldn't make technical sense anyway) and the last time I checked the decission for a Berkeley style (C) for the glibc startup code hasn't been made yet. Ralf -- A weird imagination is most useful to gain full advantage of all the features - manpage of amd(8).