cdrtools - a tale of two licenses [LWN.net]

cdrtools - a tale of two licenses

Posted Aug 13, 2006 10:04 UTC (Sun) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183)
In reply to: cdrtools - a tale of two licenses by dmantione
Parent article: cdrtools - a tale of two licenses

Eh? It says in GPL:

The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable. [emphasis mine]

Now, Jourg has argued that Makefiles are not scripts. You can argue that ofcourse, but that's just playing with words, IMHO.

You're right that the GPL cannot go beyond copyright law, but it's the GPL that controls the distribution the main source and it insists on being shipped with the makefiles under a compatible licence. Whether the makefiles are a seperate work or not is orrelevent.

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cdrtools - a tale of two licenses

Posted Aug 13, 2006 12:12 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

Schilling is claiming his Makefile does not belong to the work and he GPL'ed a bunch of .c files. You can only prove that it belongs to the work using copyright law.

There are no need. If you are using Makefiles to build the program - then you can not distribute the result (GPL forbids it). If you don't use CDDL-licensed makefiles - then of course you can distribute the binary and can just remove offending CDDL-licensed Makefiles (why keep them around if they are not needed, after all?). But it'll be too cumbersome, I afraid. Makefiles are independent work - but resulting binary is not. It uses both Makefiles and source files and since these files have incompatible licenses... you can not redistribut the binary.

Note: Schilling did nothing wrong here. Debian (or any other distribution-creator) will be copyright offender. And this means it's time to adandon cdrecord (what other stupidity will Schilling invent next?).

cdrtools - a tale of two licenses

Posted Aug 13, 2006 13:08 UTC (Sun) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link]

Is that you Jörg?

Again, it does not matter whether the GPL work "contains scripts". The GPL requires that the necessary scripts used to build the work be made available under the same terms as the source, that is under the GPL. It does not matter whether these scripts are "part of the work". If they are not available under the GPL, then the GPL license is not satisfied, and you are not granted permission to redistribute.

Now, in this case the scripts and program are authored by the same person. If he is the exclusive copyright holder, it is possible he could certainly modify the license under which the program is distributed to make it a GPL program with the added permission that the script system he authors under CDDL may be used as a substitute. (It is possible I misunderstand what kinds of special exceptions may be provided.) However, even if this is possible, Jörg refuses to do so because he refuses to understand the licenses, and expects every one else to agree with his highly irregular interpretation.

cdrtools - a tale of two licenses

Posted Aug 14, 2006 17:24 UTC (Mon) by AJWM (guest, #15888) [Link]

>The GPL requires that the necessary scripts used to build the work be made available under the same terms as the source

That only applies if "the work" is an executable. As an above poster pointed out, if you're just distributing a bunch of C source files, there are no scripts involved -- the work is what it is. As soon as somebody compiles that and distributes the binary, _then_ they have to pass on the source and build scripts too.

Debian's role

Posted Aug 14, 2006 19:53 UTC (Mon) by dark (✭ supporter ✭, #8483) [Link]

Debian is in the "then" position -- it compiles binary packages and ships them, along with the source. If it can't do that in accordance with the terms of the license, then that package won't go into Debian.