In <20000623233110.33482.qmail@hotmail.com> Mr Smith (lockdown34@hotmail.com) wrote:
> I'm sorry, but the fact your still using words like "providing the
> required offer" suggest you missed my point.
You made a lot of unneeded noise here. (Unneeded HERE, I mean: it's good
thing to discuss, but NOT here - it's not kernel issue at all).
> The goals of Copyleft are not *legally* possible.
It is. Copyleft IS copyright. And it CAN BE forced (till not proven otherwise
in court). It's not automatic, though: copyright holder must sue offending
company.
> GPL and LGPL are just a smoke and mirrors game to give the illusion that
> companies like Corel Corp and Abit must follow Copyleft.
It was not tested in court, right. But I see no reason why it should fail.
> In reality, Copyleft is nothing more than a moral and ethical guideline that
> a redistributor *chooses* to follow (or not follow). For commeralized Linux
> purposes, there is little incentive to follow the GPL *requests*.
You must comply with GPL or you can not use program at all (Ok, you can
ask copyright holder for different license).
> Since the ajority of the Linux Community could careless about the goals of
> Copyleft, a product can be commerically viable without following the moral
> guidelines provided by the Free Software Foundation and a minority of the
> Linux Community.
Then such company SHOULD BE sued. Court is SLOW, though. So it's not always
feasible. I think if we'll go in court for real it'll be very interesting
process.
> However, since you request details regarding the Red Hat Application CDs,
> I will provide it. There are eight applications I found which appear they
> might be LGPL violations. While it is possible to produce a statically
> linked Linux binary which does not use Glibc (by using a different
> programming language or a third party Libc), these statically linked binary
> share a fairly large number of strings and symbols in common with Glibc.
All linux libc's was based on glibc (even libc 4 and/or libc 5). I'm pretty
sure it WAS glibc.
> The majority of these applications produce a copyright banner when being run
> but not a single one included a LGPL notice with the copyright banner.
It's not required by LGPL.
> None of the documentation I went through discussed that a LGPL work was
> statically linked into the binaries. Anotherwords, there isn't even the
> requested notice of use and hence an offer of object files. The likelyhood
> that any correspondance will result in the company changing their ways is
> unlikely.
It's task for FSF :-) We'll see...
> But, so what? Do we attack these companies just like Abit and LinuxOne?
Not yet.
> Heck, Knox Software Corp won Linux World 1999 Editors' Choice award!
> Do we recognize them as having an award winning product and then boycott it?
Yes, we should.
> These are not bad companies or bad people, they are just following the
> Linux Community standard waving some LGPL and GPL requests!
It's not about "bad people" or "good people". It's about law.
> As a side issue, I think the fact that this whole discussion is considered
> off-topic only goes to prove my point.
It's offtopic in lkml just since you are talking NOT about the kernel but
about userspace (last time I checked glibc was NOT part of the kernel).
If you talked about kernel modules or drivers it was on topic for lkml.
> It wasn't always that Copyleft style goals where not considered important to
> the development process.
It was and it IS. Why bsd copression can not be linked in kernel ? Due
copyright problem. Just as an example.
> The original Frenix (now known as Linux) license was even more strict than
> the GPL regarding distribution terms. Linus ended up choosing the GPL, it
> wasn't an accident. And it was choosen because the Copyleft goals where as
> critical to the development process as the code it covered. The Linux
> Community majority has spoken and now the only development discussion that
> is important is the code regardless of how it get redistributed.
> Personally, I think this is pritty sad and I think the death of Copyleft
> should be noted in the archives of Linux kernel development.
Copyleft will be dead ONLY when court says so.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Jun 26 2000 - 21:00:05 EST