On Wed, 21 Aug 2013 11:18:48 -0700 John R Pierce pierce@hogranch.com wrote:
On 8/21/2013 10:05 AM, Joerg Schilling wrote:
But Debian attacked cdrtools for using the GPL when it has been 100% GPL.
I find this an extremely odd assertation. I am not nor ever have been a Debian user, but I know Debian is based on the Linux Kernel, uses GCC, gnu libc, etc as its core, and these are ALL gpl. in what way were you 'attacked' by a 'project' (not an individual? we all know individuals can act loony) for using the same license as the bulk of the rest of the Debian distribution?
While Joerg certainly knows better... I think the issue was that cdrtools could be built only with the schilly-toolchain (or whatever the exact name), and that was *not* GPL. So according to some interpretations of the GPL, while cdrtools was claiming to be GPL-licensed, there was no GPL-compatible way to build the binaries from that source, which arguably made it violate GPL. That's why Debian folks attacked, as far as I understood.
The issue was resolved by Joerg re-licensing the cdrtools to CDDL, which does not impose restrictions on the toolchain used to build it. And that made it a no-go for mostly all distros since.
All this with the usual caveat that my memory might not be very correct here... ;-)
Best, :-) Marko