Compatibility of the AFL with the GPL

Mark Rafn dagon at dagon.net
Thu Mar 13 03:06:08 UTC 2003


On Wed, 12 Mar 2003, Lawrence E. Rosen wrote:

> > It's not you, the AFL copyright holder, who can choose not to 
> > care.  It's Jimmy Q. Gplauthor, whose copyright is infringed 
> > by having a derivative work (the GPL+AFL code) distributed 
> > under more restrictive terms than the GPL.
> 
> Huh?  Is Jimmy == Person A, Person B or Person C?  Keep your parties
> straight.  I challenge you to find any copyright infringement in
> anything I suggested!!!!

Jimmy is none of the above, he's the author of X.  Sorry, I didn't want to
dig through the archives to find the previous example.  Here it is:

>> Person A writes W and licenses it to everyone under the AFL.  Person B
>> comes along and, in the true spirit of free software, creates and
>> distributes collective work W+X and derivative work W' under the GPL.
>> No surprises for B.  He's read the AFL and the GPL and he understands
>> that he's doing what's allowed.

I'm not sure exactly what W+X is, whether it's mere aggregation of W and 
X, or whether it's work derivative of both.  

Let's use WX to be a derivative work of both W and X, whether it be by 
linking, copying parts of code, or whatnot.  WX is not distributable by 
anyone, as it cannot meet both the GPL and the AFL.
--
Mark Rafn    dagon at dagon.net    <http://www.dagon.net/>  
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