From owner-freebsd-chat Mon Dec 17 17:40:18 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from monorchid.lemis.com (monorchid.lemis.com [192.109.197.75]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 187AF37B41A for ; Mon, 17 Dec 2001 17:40:14 -0800 (PST) Received: by monorchid.lemis.com (Postfix, from userid 1004) id EB64D786E3; Tue, 18 Dec 2001 12:10:11 +1030 (CST) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 12:10:11 +1030 From: Greg Lehey To: FreeBSD Chat Subject: GPL nonsense: time to stop Message-ID: <20011218121011.E21649@monorchid.lemis.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.23i Organization: LEMIS, PO Box 460, Echunga SA 5153, Australia Phone: +61-8-8388-8286 Fax: +61-8-8388-8725 Mobile: +61-418-838-708 WWW-Home-Page: http://www.lemis.com/~grog X-PGP-Fingerprint: 6B 7B C3 8C 61 CD 54 AF 13 24 52 F8 6D A4 95 EF Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org I can't be bothered to reply to any more of the GPL thread. It's clear that we have in the project a vocal minority of rabid anti-GNU people who ignore the facts, and in some cases twist statements to suit their own prejudices. I don't believe we have a need for people like that in the project. I certainly don't intend to feed them. The fact is that Stallman says: > If you link some GPL-covered code into the kernel, the GPL's > conditions will apply to the kernel as a whole. But only to that kernel, which is a binary. The only effect the GPL has on a binary is to require the supplier to also supply the source code on request. I can't imagine that we'd have problems with that. > I don't think that results in any legal difficulty. The FreeBSD > kernel uses the revised BSD license, right? That is compatible with > the GPL. So you can link these things together. The kernel code > released under the revised BSD license will continue to be under the > revised BSD license; it is only the *combination as a whole* that > will be covered by the GPL--if and when the GPL-covered code is > included in it. If someone links a kernel without that GPL-covered > code, the GPL won't apply to that kernel. > > The main consequence, legally, of including some GPL-covered code > would be that you could not *also* link in other code with > GPL-incompatible licenses. There's one unclear area here, that some of the files still use the original BSD license. I need to discuss with rms what effect that has. Greg -- Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message