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Another counterexample?Another counterexample?Posted Jun 25, 2008 10:23 UTC (Wed) by dwmw2 (subscriber, #2063)In reply to: Another counterexample? by tetromino Parent article: A position statement on closed-source kernel modules
I am not a lawyer, but I am guessing that if you put A's library and B's program on one CD and sell it, you are not violating the GPL (since aggregation is not a derivative work, see article 2 of GPL-2).Putting two unrelated programs on a CD probably would count as "mere aggregation on a volume of a storage or distribution medium". But your reasoning in parentheses is a little suspect... ยง2 of the the GPL (v2) explicitly states that it applies to collective works — and collective works are aggregation, by definition.
The GPL goes on to make an exception for "mere aggregation on a volume of a storage or distribution medium". That's not a particularly specific definition, and people could argue about precisely what it means for ever — although that argument would be fairly pointless because there is no "right" answer until/unless a court has ruled on it. In your particular jurisdiction. However, what we can manage for ourselves, as laypeople, is to eliminate the interpretations which are meaningless and contradictory. For example, if that "mere aggregation on a volume of a storage or distribution medium" paragraph actually excuses all forms of aggregation, which includes all collective works, then the two preceding paragraphs of the GPL — the ones which talk about the GPL applying to sections of a collective work which, if distributed separately, would be considered independent and separate works in themselves — would be a particularly verbose no-op. I don't particularly want to get into a long discussion about precisely what would count as "mere aggregation on a volume of a storage or distribution medium", but I think it's a fairly safe bet to assume that a court isn't going to rule that the GPL is self-contradictory and it actually means to except all forms of aggregation from its terms.
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