Re: On interpreting licences (was: KDE not in Debian?)
Date forwarded: 13 Feb 2000 11:23:26 -0000
Date sent: Sun, 13 Feb 2000 04:23:21 -0700 (MST)
From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
To: aj@azure.humbug.org.au
Copies to: debian-legal@lists.debian.org
Subject: Re: On interpreting licences (was: KDE not in Debian?)
Send reply to: rms@gnu.org
Forwarded by: debian-legal@lists.debian.org
> Around 1989, NeXT wanted to release the Objective C front end as just
> object files, and tell the user to link them with GCC. Since this
> would clearly be against the goal of the GPL, I asked our lawyer
> whether we had grounds to object. He said that what NeXT proposed to
> do would be tantamount to distributing a larger program which contains GCC,
> and therefore would violate the GPL. I conveyed this to NeXT, and they
> released the Objective C front end as free software.
[cut]
I am not an expert in comon law, I only knew something about
continental law but the case described above look for me as difrerent
from the one which is discussed here. In the NEXT case the proprietary
license was "linked" on GPL. In Trol Tech case we are talking about
GPL "linked" on non-fully-free licence. For me this is totaly diferent
story. If I am right?
zakend
"navigare necesse est even on the web"
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