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Re: Licensing of OpenSource code and eCos


On Mon, Sep 30, 2002 at 09:32:19PM +0200, Iztok Zupet wrote:
> On Mon, 2002-09-30 at 21:23, Jonathan Larmour wrote:
> > We did choose the licence knowing full well that it would cause problems 
> > integrating GPLd code into the codebase, but at least *users* can use GPLd 
> > code.
> 
> Still bad. Users can write proprietary applications on Linux, whilst
> they can't do that on eCos if it has only one fully GPL-ed module
> included. 

Gotcha,

GPL policy triumphs in this case. If you want to incorporate GPL'ed work here, 
you better accept that the rest of your system needs to be GPL too. This is
the openly stated goal of the Free Software movement and the movement has reached 
this goal in this case. 

On the other hand, this brings about the fundamental issue with GPL that the 
scope of the Copyleft is always somewhat arbitrary; this is proven by the very 
fact that Linus found it necessary to at least make some explicit specification
(limitation ?) about the scope of the GPL license on the Linux kernel, namely not 
to include programs running on top of Linux and using the standard interfaces. 

Then you could start asking a number of fundamental questions, such as "Is it 
fair that a proprietary application on top of GPL'ed Linux is allowed and a 
proprietary application on GPL'ed eCos not ?", "Is Linux still GPL, with this 
extra clarification of the scope of Copyleft added ?", "How broad will the 
scope of the GPL Copyleft eventually be defined in court?". The eCos license 
is also nothing more than GPL with a stronger limitation of the scope of 
Copyleft ...  These are not easy questions, but I am afraid we need to ask 
them sooner or later. I don't know the answers, but if we have the answers, 
we will stand stronger to defend Free Software.

Peter

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