Explained in other words

Posted Jul 28, 2009 12:10 UTC (Tue) by MathFox (guest, #6104)
In reply to: Explained in other words by elama
Parent article: A new GCC runtime library license snag?

The problem is that there are several reasonable ways to interpret 'accompanies the executable' and Debian-legal is not entirely sure on what it means. I am sure that it was not the intention of the FSF to create a problem here, but it has happened in the license drafting process.

Reasonable interpretations of "accompanying" would be "on the same CD or in the same CD set" and "side by side on the same server". So, if you follow a strict license interpretation, Debian has to choose between GPLv2-git and a new GPLv3-gcc and can not carry both. (Well, as a stopgap they could compile GPLv2 only programs with a GPLv2+ version of gcc...)

The problem exists because version 2 and 3 of the GPL are incompatible and the authors of the GPLv2 only programs can not relicense libgcc.

Explained in other words

Posted Jul 29, 2009 1:41 UTC (Wed) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link] (1 responses)

Isn't there "mere aggregation" language in there somewhere specifically to protect distributors?

Yes and no

Posted Jul 30, 2009 5:28 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

Isn't there "mere aggregation" language in there somewhere specifically to protect distributors?

Yes, but that sentence covers totally different case. It gives you right to ship GPLed git and proprietary adobe flash player on the same CD: as long as program are totally unrelated their license don't clash. Unfortunatelly git and libgcc are intimately intervined, so "mere aggregation" defense does not fly...

Explained in other words

Posted Jul 29, 2009 11:14 UTC (Wed) by garloff (subscriber, #319) [Link]

MathFox wrote:
> (Well, as a stopgap they could compile GPLv2 only programs with a
> GPLv2+ version of gcc...)

It would be enough if Debian compiled a GPLv2+ version of libgcc and made
sure that git uses that one instead of the GPLv3 libgcc. As someone pointed
out, the changes to libgcc have been minimal, so that effort is not very
large.

Explained in other words

Posted Jul 29, 2009 20:03 UTC (Wed) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link] (1 responses)

"Side by side on the same server"... this would mean that if I have e.g. OpenSolaris and BSD and some Linux distributions on a mirror somwehwere, the license terms kick in? Sounds horrible.

human judges

Posted Jul 29, 2009 20:12 UTC (Wed) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

They'll look at whether things are intended to be together, or intended to be combined after download, etc. They won't view Debian+OpenSolaris in the same way as they'd view git+gcc packages for Debian.

When learning to be a computer admin or programmer, we're taught how to see *past* the differences between a lump of bits that forms an operating system ISO and a lump of bits that forms a picture. To think about legal issues, we have to remember to look *at* those differences.