RE: Linus about GPL x BSD(long)

> On Sat, 20 Jul 2002, Patrik Stridvall wrote:
> 
> > But yes, I agree that it is preposterous, and I very much doubt
> > it would fly in court.
> 
> I'm not clear what you mean by this.  You don't believe the 
> GPL's viral 
> mechanism would stand a court challenge?  

For the most part, no.

> I suspect it could 
> survive in 
> court against someone distributed a statically-linked binary 
> with GPL code 
> in the binary -- that binary is clearly a derived work of the 
> GPL code, and 
> without some sort of license, it's copyright infringement to 
> distribute it.
> I suspect the GPL would hold up pretty easily in that case, but IANAL.

I think the main issue is do you distribute the GPL:ed work in whole
or in part at all.

Whether your code is meant to statically link or dynamically link or
interact with the GPL:ed work some other way is IMHO opinion irrelevant.
They are all the same thing from an abstract point of view.
 
You will have to avoid that your code becomes a derived work of course.
However that will IMHO in most cases be quite easy so that wouldn't be
really be problem.

> On the other hand, dynamic linking is a very grey area, 
> regardless of the 
> FSF's views on the matter.  It's quite possible for a court 
> to decide that 
> only static linking obligates the author.  Or they might 
> instead agree with 
> the most agressive interpretation that the FSF uses.  

As I said, I think that as long as you doesn't actually distribute
the GPL work itself you are pretty safe. Just do as FreeBSD does
in it's port collection. Just provide an URL and a script that the
user can run so that it download and compiles everything.

> It's a 
> big unknown...

If you actually distribute that GPL:ed work is some form that is
quite true. I wouldn't want to do that until the court clear this up.

But then, with the Internet there is very little need to actually do that.
The user can do that himself with the help of appropriate scripts...