Re: Dangerous precedent being set - possible serious violation of the GPL

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

Putting GPL-covered programs together with non-free programs in a
collection such as an operating system does not violate the GPL, and
Corel is not the first to do this.  I think this is a harmful practice,
and that even Debian goes too far in this direction, but there is no
use singling out Corel for criticism.

Making people agree to a license with conditions about the use of the
non-free programs, as part of obtaining the GPL-covered programs,
might be a violation, but I am not sure.  **As long as the license
imposes no conditions on the use of the GPL-covered programs, other
than the GPL,** one can argue that this is simply a way of choosing
to distribute the GPL-covered programs only to those who are customers
for the others.  That is legitimate.


I think the crucial question here is, has Corel written significant
new free software?  And what license(s) are they using for it?