Re: Fedora Freedom and linux-libre

[Alexandre Oliva <aoliva redhat com>]

On Jun 18, 2008, Les Mikesell <lesmikesell gmail com> wrote:

> I could have redistributed the combination if I had started with the
> original pdtar instead of gnutar.

pdtar was presumably under the public domain, i.e., copyright law
didn't restrict its use.

If you'd started with any other derived version of pdtar that wasn't
in the public domain, or even one that was but that wasn't Free
because you didn't have access to the source code, you'd need
permission/help from the copyright/source holders of that particular
version you started out from in order to be able to create the
combined work and distribute it.

> There is no reasonable interpretation that anything but the GPL
> restrictions applied along with the changes between the pdtar and
> gnutar versions restricted distribution of my subsequent modification
> of the gnutar code.

Not GPL.  There isn't any part of the GPL that says you can't do it.
Look for it and, if you find it, quote it here.

What stops you from doing it is not the GPL.  It's copyright law.  Go
figure.

> Of course I was mistaken at the time in thinking that GPL'd code was
> suitable for re-use and sharing and know better now.

http://fsfla.org/svnwiki/blogs/lxo/draft/forking-and-license-patching

-- 
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}