cdrtools - a tale of two licenses

cdrtools - a tale of two licenses

Posted Aug 14, 2006 12:55 UTC (Mon) by dwmw2 (subscriber, #2063)
In reply to: cdrtools - a tale of two licenses by dmantione
Parent article: cdrtools - a tale of two licenses

" As long as he can maintain that his build system is an independend work, there is nothing in the GPL that forbids distributing binaries."

If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the [GPL'd parts], and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then [the GPL], and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works.

But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on [the GPL parts], the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of [the GPL], whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.

(GPL, section 2)

One cannot sensibly argue that the combination of build scripts with the source code that they build is 'mere aggregation on a volume of a storage or distribution medium'. It is a collective work, and the GPL applies to all parts of it -- even those parts which would be considered independent and separate works if distributed on their own.

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