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

cdrtools - a tale of two licenses

Posted Aug 13, 2006 10:14 UTC (Sun) by dmantione (guest, #4640)
In reply to: cdrtools - a tale of two licenses by kleptog
Parent article: cdrtools - a tale of two licenses

No, the GPL'ed work does not contain scripts. There is no reason you
cannot GPL a bunch of .c files. However, if you include a Makefile in the
work, the GPL says it belongs to the source code and a third party has to
redistribute it.

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.

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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 (subscriber, #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 (subscriber, #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.