On Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 3:56 AM, Joerg Schilling <Joerg.Schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de> wrote: > Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com> wrote: > >> On Mon, Apr 27, 2015 at 2:13 PM, Joerg Schilling >> <Joerg.Schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de> wrote: >> > Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com> wrote: >> > >> > There was no court case, but VERITAS published a modifed version of gtar where >> > additional code was added by binary only libraries from VERITAS. The FSF did >> > never try to discuss this is public even though everybody did know about the >> > existence. As long as the FSF does not try to sue VERITAS, we are safe - >> > regardless what intentional nonsense you can read on the FSF webpages. >> >> I just remembered a counterpoint to this. Back in the Windows 3.0 >> days when windows had no tcp networking of its own, I put together a >> DOS binary built from gnutar and the wattcp stack so you could back up >> a windows or dos box to a unix system via rsh. And when I tried to >> give it away I was contacted and told that I couldn't distribute it >> because even though wattcp was distributed in source, it had other >> conflicts with the GPL. As a side effect of getting it to build on a > > If you had the wattcp stack in a separate library and if you did make the > needed changes for integration in the gtar source, this was fully legal. The source code was separate files, but the binary 'work as a whole' had to be one. I don't think DOS even had a concept of loading binary libraries separate from the main executable. And the binary obviously is controlled by the copyright on the source. So while I don't like it, I can see the point that it does not meet the GPL requirement any more than it would if it were linked to a commercial library that another user would have to purchase. And there's a reasonable chance they could make an equivalent case even where shared libraries can be used, since the intent is the same. > I know that the FSF frequently tries to ask people to do things that are not on > a legal base. They however know that they cannot go on trial with this... Yes, so, the only way to help keep others from being harmed by this is to dual-license code so they can't possibly make such a claim. It doesn't happen with perl because Larry Wall understood that long ago. Or, if you are so sure of your legal footing, distribute something that they will challenge yourself and win the case that will set the precedent for the rest of us. But I'd guess dual-licensing would be easier and cheaper. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com