[haiku-development] Re: INPUT / VOTE : --include-gpl-addons
- From: Anoop Kumar Narayanan <anoop.kn@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: haiku-development@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 21 Aug 2009 04:01:44 +0530
I am guessing this the GPL Licensing problem, else please ignore this mail.
Any GPL code (be it 2 lines of it) if incorporated into any software,
then that software becomes a derivate of the GPL code :) and the
source code of that software has to be made open under GPL License. If
Haiku has 2 lines of GPL code in some unused library, then Haiku
becomes GPL and not BSD.
Unless its licensed as LGPL, in which case the LGPL code has to be
dynamically linked to the software, but any modifications to LGPL
library must be made open under LGPL license.
So incorporating xine or mplayer (GPL products) as inbuilt with
media-kit will make every software on Haiku that is statically or
dynamically linked to it media-kit a GPL software. GPL is an
overriding license.
This is why glibc is LGPL, if it was GPL then no one on the planet
could have ever used it.
Regards,
-Anoop
On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 3:30 AM, Urias McCullough<umccullough@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 2:33 PM, Truls Becken<truls.becken@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> As long as installing additional packages is painless for the end
>> user, this will not really be a major setback. (On the other hand, it
>> would be nice if such licensing issues would not dictate what to
>> include in the base system.)
>
> I think I already stated that I would be OK with this as a reasonable
> alternative if things got too muddy.
>
> Unfortunately we won't likely have such a thing prior to alpha...
>
> So the user will have to download/unzip the extra pieces. One wonders
> also if the "spirit" of the GPL will be violated by releasing these as
> separately-installable addons from the same project/website as the
> official OS release.
>
> Matt: Can build-o-matic build individual targets? :)
>
> - Urias
>
>
Other related posts:
