Bundling and the GPL [LWN.net]

Bundling and the GPL

Posted Jun 21, 2006 6:15 UTC (Wed) by wilck (subscriber, #29844)
In reply to: Bundling and the GPL by khim
Parent article: Harald Welte on the flood of GPL violations

> it does not matter if you are using interfaces or not. If you are bundling
> two things in one box - they become parts of "collective work".

That's the lawyers' perspective, yes. Because it is much, much easier to talk about bundling than about highly technical questions like whether or not a certain function call is part of a published interface.

To me, as a technical person, the question whether or not e.g. the kernel and a binary driver are delivered in the same CD set seems superficial. That was the point I was trying to make.

If a download script is in a CD set instead of a piece of software, the question would be "Is it the intention of the distributor that (some) users run this script to form an end product which is the combination of GPLd and proprietary components?" and if the answer was yes, the whole thing would have to be considered a derivative work.

Next step: instead of the installation script, the distributor just includes a help page with a link to the downloadable component plus installation instructions. What now?

I don't think the discussion about "mere aggregation" helps a lot either - for any device that can connect to the net in some way, a download URL is just as good as a piece of software on a CD. Most phones can download stuff from the net without trouble. I think the two must be basically regarded equivalent, at least when we talk about the not-too-far future.

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Bundling and the GPL

Posted Jun 21, 2006 17:50 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

> it does not matter if you are using interfaces or not. If you are bundling two things in one box - they become parts of "collective work".

Exactly! And when you are talking about law then usual engeenering approach ("let's tackle hard problems first - then simple ones will be resolved automagically") should take a backseat. It's much safer to close simple loopholes - and then you can go further and try close more subtle ones.

Please, please, please at least try to think like "Joe Average" for once. Suppose we are starting from bundling and go from there: first we establish that you can not ship invasive binary modules in the same package as kernel, then we are starting to talk about download scripts and "helpfull instructions", etc. At every stage we are moving from established case where GPL-violation is proven to unknown one. If we'll start from nVidia binary driver (binary blob and open-sourced glue code distributed separately from kernel) and court decides that "it's not GPL violation at all" (quite likely) then you are moving from established case where GPL in not violated to unknown one.

You can be absolutely sure that first approach will give GPL more reach in the end. Because if first approach it looks like GPL-violators are trying one trick after another to circumvent GPL and in second approach it looks like "GPL-zealots" are attacking people in smaller and smaller area.

Is it really so hard to understand ? I'm not saying that we should forget about "derived work" question - I just think it's silly to start with this quite complex question where there are hundreds of less-subtle violators around.

Bundling and the GPL

Posted Jun 22, 2006 4:23 UTC (Thu) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322) [Link]

Great point. Cover all the firm ground before trying to claim the
mire :-)

Bundling and the GPL

Posted Jun 22, 2006 8:04 UTC (Thu) by wilck (subscriber, #29844) [Link]

Makes sense, from a strategic viewpoint. But what is the goal of that strategy?

Will the end result be that bundled packages are "wrong" while download scripts are "right" (as many now seem to anticipate)? I, for one, consider that worst of both worlds - binary modules would still exist, while the hassle of downloading and integrating them would be on the user's side.
Is that really what we want?

Talking about generic Linux distributions here.

It's different if someone bundles e.g. the kernel and nVidia module _with corresponding hardware_ to form a special product with preinstalled Linux. that would be a pretty obvious violation, because it is bundling _with a specific purpose_: a new "value-added" product.

IAobviouslyNAL, these are just my gut feelings.

Bundling and the GPL

Posted Jun 23, 2006 22:06 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

Khim wrote:

I'm not saying that we should forget about "derived work" question - I just think it's silly to start with this quite complex question where there are hundreds of less-subtle violators around.

You seem to have forgotten the topic of this thread, which you started. It isn't where is the reasonable place to start in advancing or understanding GPL. It's what is the more interesting GPL-related legal question.

Khim wrote:

The most interesting case is not binary modules per se but combination of binary module and kernel!

And then sepreece wrote, in contradiction:

The more interesting question, today, is "what is a derivative work."

I agree with sepreece. The derivative work question is more interesting than the collective work one. If an author can stop you from independently distributing your entirely original code because it gets used with the author's code, that's worth a headline. If a certain way of shipping a bundle of software is found to be creating an indivisible new whole -- that's kind of a yawner.

Also, in terms of impact on the world -- a derivative work finding is pretty hard for a distributor to work around. A collective work finding just means the distributor has to bundle somewhat more loosely.