Binary modules and derived works

Posted Dec 11, 2003 17:55 UTC (Thu) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330)
Parent article: Binary modules and derived works

Ted T'so is, I think, incorrect about the FSF's opinion on GPL'ed libraries where alternative implementations exist (I assume you're interpreting what he said accurately).

We had this fight a few years ago, when GMP (the GNU arbitrary-precision math library) was under the GPL. Someone distributed patches to make RSA's RIPEM work with GMP, which was much faster than the math routines RIPEM contained. The FSF objected that this was a license violation. People objected that the FSF was claiming a user interface copyright. The FSF denied this, saying that the new code could work with nothing but GMP and was therefore a derivative work of GMP. There were some troubling aspects to the FSF's position, as they were in essence objecting to the distribution of a rather small patch, which in itself did not contain any of their code.

Someone whacked together something called FGMP, which provided the same interface as GMP for the subset of routines used by the patched RIPEM. RMS agreed that, under the changed circumstances, he could no longer claim that the patched RIPEM was a derivative work of GMP -- even though FGMP was far inferior to GMP in performance terms, meaning that no one would really use it.

In the end, the FSF changed the license of GMP to the LGPL to end that fight.

Now, in the readline case, I'm not sure what the facts are, but it would seem that the FSF would need to back off if there truly are complete BSD-licensed readline implementations. And if so, they probably will; generally, their goal has been to use the GPL to leverage the creation of more free software, and they've used less restrictive licensing for libraries that implement standards or where competing implementations exist.