Collabora Online moves out of The Document Foundation

Sure, there are FAQs about this. Sure, the LGPL has a linking exception. But under American common law, none of that matters because none of it appears within the four corners of the license (i.e. the GPL or AGPL). Within the four corners of the document, all you get is this:

> To “modify” a work means to copy from or adapt all or part of the work in a fashion requiring copyright permission, other than the making of an exact copy. The resulting work is called a “modified version” of the earlier work or a work “based on” the earlier work.
> [...]
> To “propagate” a work means to do anything with it that, without permission, would make you directly or secondarily liable for infringement under applicable copyright law, except executing it on a computer or modifying a private copy. Propagation includes copying, distribution (with or without modification), making available to the public, and in some countries other activities as well.
>
> To “convey” a work means any kind of propagation that enables other parties to make or receive copies. Mere interaction with a user through a computer network, with no transfer of a copy, is not conveying.

Note the conspicuous lack of the word "linking." The GPL does not actually say that linking creates a derivative work! Instead, it leaves this question up to the ambient copyright law.

The problems with this are twofold:

1. Some judge might decide that linking actually does not create a derivative work at all, possibly in a copyright lawsuit having nothing to do with the GPL.
2. Some judge might decide that something which is not linking (e.g. a pipe or socket) also creates a derivative work.

The GPL can't really fix or prevent #1, because if #1 happens, then that would place linking outside the scope of the original's copyright. But the GPL could cabin in #2 with some kind of "pipe and socket exception." Obviously, the FSF does not want to do that, because it would make it far too easy for a proprietary developer to simply convert a library interface into a pipe/socket RPC interface, and they prefer to have a gray area of the law to fall back on in case someone tries something like that.

(Technically, section 5 does contain some language making exceptions for an "aggregate" of unrelated software. But this still does not refer to "linking" as such, and appears designed to function as a very narrow exception for software that doesn't really interact at all.)

But that also means that it is incorrect to assert that "pipes and sockets are not subject to the GPL." This is not necessarily true. Pipes and sockets might be subject to the GPL, or they might not, depending on which judge you happen to get randomly assigned, how technically literate that particular judge happens to be, and to a much lesser extent, whether or not you are actually trying to play fast and loose with the license in the first place.

Yes, I know, we should "just be reasonable, and everything will be fine." Unfortunately, corporate lawyers really don't like it when you tell them "It's OK, we're being reasonable. Everything will be fine."