Approval of IWL - Consolidated Response

[Lawrence Rosen]

> That's not what the FSF says, they claim that linking against GPLed
> code makes your code GPLed, a clear case of reaching across APIs. And
> if I'm not mistaken, this view has been upheld by courts in Germany
> (but I'm not a lawyer). So, is the FSF wrong? Are the courts wrong?

If FSF says this, they are wrong!

Courts have never upheld the FSF view.

/Larry

Lawrence Rosen
Rosenlaw & Einschlag, a technology law firm (www.rosenlaw.com)
3001 King Ranch Road, Ukiah, CA 95482
707-485-1242 * cell: 707-478-8932 * fax: 707-485-1243
Skype: LawrenceRosen
Author of "Open Source Licensing: Software Freedom and 
                Intellectual Property Law" (Prentice Hall 2004)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gernot Heiser [mailto:gernot at ok-labs.com]
> Sent: Saturday, June 14, 2008 12:24 PM
> To: license-review at opensource.org
> Subject: Re: Approval of IWL - Consolidated Response
> 
> >>>>> On Wed, 11 Jun 2008 22:08:13 -0700, Bruce Perens <bruce at perens.com>
> said:
> BP> Russ Nelson wrote:
> >> Gernot Heiser writes:
> >> > >>>>> On Wed, 11 Jun 2008 17:13:10 -0700, Bruce Perens
> <bruce at perens.com> said:
> >> > BP> FYI, I wrote OSD #9 and agree that its language is intended to
> prohibit
> >> > BP> the terms in your license section (c)(ii).
> >> >
> >> > Ok, so please excuse my ignorance. If this is a problem for the IWL,
> >> > why is it not a problem for the GPL?
> >>
> >> Because the GPL relies on there being a single work.  The GPL doesn't
> >> try to reach across an API into other pieces of software.
> 
> That's not what the FSF says, they claim that linking against GPLed
> code makes your code GPLed, a clear case of reaching across APIs. And
> if I'm not mistaken, this view has been upheld by courts in Germany
> (but I'm not a lawyer). So, is the FSF wrong? Are the courts wrong?
> 
> BP> Essentially this is the difference between "use" and creation of  a
> BP> derivative work.
> BP> The OSD was created as a policy of the Debian distribution, when I was
> BP> the Debian project leader. One of my goals was that plain users, those
> BP> who weren't modifying the software in the Debian system, would be able
> BP> to use all of the software in the Debian system without concerning
> BP> themselves with the licenses or requiring an attorney. Debian would
> not
> BP> have been practical to use otherwise. But that applies to Open Source
> as
> BP> a whole, too. Any significant restriction on use makes it impractical.
> 
> I really have a problem understanding where you draw the boundary
> between this and the GPL situation, and how you can do it
> unambiguously. "All code" is bad, but some code is ok? How much is
> "some"?
> 
> Gernot