Re: Fedora Freedom and linux-libre

[Alexandre Oliva <aoliva redhat com>]

On Jun 16, 2008, "Horst H. von Brand" <vonbrand inf utfsm cl> wrote:

> Les Mikesell <lesmikesell gmail com> wrote:

>> They claim that it doesn't matter if the components are
>> distributed separately or not.  For example, you can't modify a GPL'd
>> component so that it needs a library under different terms even if the
>> parts are never distributed together.

> Sure you can. In the heyday of GNU software it was /only/ run on
> propietary systems, and all that software was routinely modified
> with the express purpose of running on newer/changed versions of
> propietary systems (which were the only ones available, remember).

But the permission to distribute the combined works is presumably
covered by the system library exception.  I don't think it's enough to
distribute a non-GPLed library separately to have permission under the
GPL to distribute a program derived from it.

-- 
Alexandre Oliva         http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
Free Software Evangelist  oliva {lsd ic unicamp br, gnu.org}
FSFLA Board Member       ¡Sé Libre! => http://www.fsfla.org/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer   aoliva {redhat com, gcc.gnu.org}