There'll be no halt

Posted Sep 23, 2006 13:30 UTC (Sat) by coriordan (guest, #7544)
In reply to: There'll be no halt by Felix_the_Mac
Parent article: Kernel developers' position on GPLv3

A distribution is an aggregation of software packages, not a combined work (using copyright law definitions). The software packages are not necessarily linked. An aggregation of packages doesn't require compatible licences (this is why Apache HTTP server and GNU/Linux can be shipped on the same CD).

GPLv2 section 2 says this is ok, and so does GPLv3 in section 5 ("...Inclusion of a covered work in an aggregate does not cause this License to apply to the other parts of the aggregate.").

Copying code from Linux into GPLv3'd packages or vice versa is a separate issue, and there _are_ some potential issues there, but there are solutions to those too. Dual licensing is one obvious one (and this can be done without dual licensing the whole kernel), licence exceptions is another. Or, of course, the best solution would be if consensus could be formed on supporiting GPLv3 (some changes could be made to GPLv3, but protecting the four freedoms to use, study+modify, redistributed, and publish modifications are not up for compromise - but the methods for how to do this in the face of DRM and patents are up for debate and suggestions are really welcome at gplv3.fsf.org).