Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
On Tue, Oct 14, 2008 at 11:23 AM, Les Mikesell lesmikesell@gmail.com wrote:
Ralf Corsepius wrote:
On Tue, 2008-10-14 at 10:50 -0400, Alan Cox wrote:
On Tue, Oct 14, 2008 at 01:38:44PM +0200, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
I know the FSF-definition very well. They are defining free in the sense of "open source"
I don't think they agree with you there, in fact Richard would probably be most upset at such a claim...
May-be, may-be not.
Fact is: The GPL's notion of freedom is essentially covering freedom on "source code". It's "viral" nature has has some implications on binaries ("make source code available to customers"), but it nowhere states that binaries having been built from GPL'ed sources must be "free-beer".
There is no distinction between binaries and source in regard to the rights recipients have to redistribute them, except for the point that if you distribute binaries at all you must also make the corresponding source available to the recipeints.
Do you have a lawyers advice on that? A courts decision on that? I ask because I have yet to see legal advice that says that versus common "well if I were the law, this is what I would interpret it to be."
I'm sure you could pay a lawyer to argue either side for you if you wanted, but I don't see any possible way to avoid the conclusion that a binary is a derivative of the original source and the license explicitly states that it applies to all derivative works.