Re: Copyright question: GPL patches for non-GPL packages
On Thu, 22 Jan 1998, Andreas Jellinghaus wrote:
> if you want to mix gpl'ed software with other software, that other
> software's licence may not conflict with the gpl.
>
...
>
> always keep in mind : gpl is not a nice licence. gpl is a licence with
> maximum restrictions to keep free software free, on all costs.
>
...
>
> >The question is: is it safe to apply GPL patches to non-GPL packages?
>
> it is not allowed, if the non-gpl'ed packages licence clashes with gpl.
> (e.g. you have to pay something, or you may not redistribute changed
> code, or ...).
>
> i guess the answer in your case is : no.
>
Hi,
thank you for the explanation. This is exactly what i was afread of...
I think that this is a problem in many non-free packages, since
many developers assert that their modifications w.r.t. the upstream source
are GLP.
On Thu, 22 Jan 1998, joost witteveen wrote:
> > Marco, what can we do now? Go back to the GNU version?
>
> Or:
>
> 1 continue to ignore the issue. (Uhm, sorry, I meant start
> a thread about it, write 100 articles and then ignore the issue)
> 2 package a "gs-aladdin-gnulib" package, that puts the code of the
> GNU source files in a library. At gs-aladdin build time we would
> have to make sure we do not use any of the GNU source files (.h or .c),
> but I guess it wouldn't be too much work to write a few .h files
> with the declarations of the functions the GNU source files use.
>
> Actually, I'm all for "1". I'm lasy.
Well, i do not like "2" very much (moreover, i think that you cannot use
GPL libraries with non-free programs: this is why we have LGPL).
I think that i'll do "1", after writing to the authors of the patches and
explaining that the package will not respect their license (however, i
will not ask them to change the license).
Thank you,
Marco
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