[forum] GPL-incompatible license

[David Dawes]

On Mon, Feb 16, 2004 at 12:20:53PM +0100, Sven Luther wrote:
>On Mon, Feb 16, 2004 at 10:46:30AM +0100, Alexander Terekhov wrote:
>> Richard Stallman wrote:
>> > 
>> >     The license change does affect some files in other application visible
>> >     libs, though, the most prominent being libXext, the library containing the
>> >     C bindings for a number of extensions.
>> > 
>> > Using it in that library would be a problem.
>> 
>> You know quite well that "GPL incomatibility" is pure fiction and 
>> that it has no legal basis under the copyright law (with out some
>> shrink-wrap contractual restrictions on use of "free" software). 
>> 
>> It's amazing that so many folks are so ignorant of basic concepts 
>> of copyright law (compilation-vs-derivative, etc.) and blindly buy 
>> into your "copyright hack" (attribution: Moglen) nonsense. 
>> 
>> And, BTW, ever heard of first sale doctrine? Rhetorical question,
>> don't bother to answer.
>
>Alexander, 
>
>Is there any particular reason for taking such an agressive tone, while
>the rest of this conversation has been rather civil upto now ? 
>
>What are you trying to achieve by this ? 
>
>And BTW, altough the GPL has not (to my knowledge) been tried in court
>yet, and maybe the SCO case will change that, each of the folk who were
>breaking it have upto now backed out before going to court.

FWIW, I happen to personally disagree with the idea of licences
crossing interface boundaries, as I have said earlier in this
discussion.  It is also questionable as to whether such things
would hold up in court.

However, I also believe that all of that is irrelevant, and that
anyone who writes software should have the freedom to set conditions
on what others may do with it(*).  The choice for others is then
either to accept the conditions (legally enforcable or not), or to
avoid said software.

(*) Providing of course that the act of setting the conditions is
    not itself illegal.

David