system library exception and derived works

system library exception and derived works

Posted Jan 20, 2006 3:12 UTC (Fri) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322)
In reply to: system library exception by drag
Parent article: GPLv3: a first look

> I think the Debian/Solaris problem is something that is inherent
> in Debian rather then in the GPL v2 license.

You can read some of the controversy here. There is a lot of
misunderstanding:

http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=2189...

The Debian/Solaris problem is partly in the interpretation of the GPLv2
definition of "complete source code". If you distribute binaries, you
must provide *source* that is sufficient to modify and regenerate those
binaries. There is an exception for system components such as compilers
and standard libraries. There's also an exception to the exception: "...
unless that component itself accompanies the executable."

So the dispute is very much down to the interpretation of the language of
version 2 of the GPL. The language in this draft of version 3 is not
quite so ambiguous.

Note that the source of the CDDL libc *is* provided, just not under GPL
terms. So in order to complain about the licence incompatibility you
also have to take a pretty strict interpretation of what is a 'derived
work'. It all hinges on whether *each* of two components distributed
together and intended to be linked at runtime constitutes a part of a
work derived from *both*. The same issue arises in the distribution of
closed kernel modules together with a GPL kernel.

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