Re: sponsor(s) needed for emelfm, upx, libucl

[David Starner <dstarner98@aasaa.ofe.org>]

On Tue, Apr 11, 2000 at 07:18:16PM +0200, Radovan Garabik wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 11, 2000 at 10:19:19AM -0500, David Starner wrote:
> > On Tue, Apr 11, 2000 at 05:03:21PM +0200, Eduard Bloch wrote:
> > > Sure. UPX creates new binaries, including an executable header (which is
> > > under GPL) and the compressed contents of the real executable. But there
> > > are some limitations regarding the compression of non-GPL-programs with
> > > an modified version of UPX. 
> > 
> > It's how Debian and RMS would interpret the conditions of the GPL - if you're
> > going to link (which, as they say, this is a special form of) with a GPL'ed
> > library (the UPX stub) then the program must be GPL. 
> 
> how is this different to compressing the (commercial) binary with gzexe?
> or to make is simpler, compressing the binary with gzip and putting
> #!/bin/sh
> gunzip -c program.gz >/tmp/program
> exec /tmp/program
> 
> as original program name?
> gzip is GPL

Because it's linking, not calling it. That's a substantial difference
according to RMS and Debian. (gzexe doesn't link gzip to the executable,
and says nothing about the shell script added to the executable.)
Another flame war over the technicallities of linking and calling and
how it affects copyright law isn't useful; can we avoid it, please?

-- 
David Starner - dstarner98@aasaa.ofe.org
Only a nerd would worry about wrong parentheses with
square brackets. But that's what mathematicians are.
   -- Dr. Burchard, math professor at OSU