Re: Now a licensing question

["Mike A. Harris" <mharris meteng on ca>]

On Wed, 6 Sep 2000, Phillip Neiswanger wrote:

>Guess I should have asked this question first.
>
>The product I work on runs only on an HP box at this time.  Portions of it,
>but not all, will soon run on a Linux box.  The files that are destine for
>the Linux box, of which none are executable, are first installed on the HP
>box.  They are then tar'd up and originally the idea was to have the user
>untar then and run some install scripts.  My idea was to place the tar and
>the scripts in a rpm and install on the Linux box using rpm. Because the
>final set of files destine for the Linux box is not really known until the
>install on the HP is performed it will be necessary to build the rpm during
>the HP installation.  To do this we will need to distribute an HP version of
>rpm.  Is this legal under the GNU license?  How 'bout the BerkleyDB license?

RPM is GPL licensed.  You can _not_ change that.  You can
redistribute RPM in binary and source form if you wish, but if
you distribute the binary, you MUST distribute or make available
the source, and any and all modifications.  So if you have taken
RPM and rebuilt it on an HP box modified or unmodified, you can
redistribute it so long as the source code is available and the
license can _NOT_ change.

Your own program however can use whatever licence you like.  So
if you have program "foo", and normally distribute it as
foo-1.00.tar.gz, you can install RPM on the HP box, create a
spec file for foo called foo.spec, build RPM packages of foo
called foo-1.00.src.rpm and foo-1.00.i386.rpm or whatever and you
can distribute your program however you see fit using whatever
licence you like.

The GPL license is for the source code and similar files for a
program.  If you do not touch this source or use it in your own
programs the GPL license does not apply.

For example, I can write a program "bar" which contains all my
own code with no external code or borrowed code.  I can license
this under whatever licence I like, GPL, BSD, commercial, or
otherwise since I wrote it.  I can then package my program in
tar.gz files, rpm packages, zip files, or whatever and distribute
it however I see fit.  The only time the GPL license enters into
the equation is when you take the source code for a program that
is GPL and use it in your own program.  The "source" isn't
necessarily C code though, it can be anything included in a
source package including icons, code, documentation, etc..

It sounds to me like you want to build Linux RPM packages under
HP.  That is ok.  The resulting RPM packages are whatever license
you decide.  You can certainly install and run RPM on any
platform you like, so long as any patches you've made to get it
to work are made available if you distribute RPM itself.

What I see happening is:

On HP box:

1) Build your program "foo" however.
2) Package the Linux portion of "foo" with RPM
3) Distribute the Linux RPM packages of "foo"

Just because RPM itself is GPL doesn't mean the packages that it
produces have to be.  They are subject to the licensing of the
code therein, and if it is your code, then it is your license.

I hope this helps.


--
Mike A. Harris  |  Computer Consultant  |  Capslock Consulting
Linux Advocate  |  Open Source Advocate |  Red Hat Linux Fanatic
[Favorite quotes of Linus Torvalds - Sept 6, 2000]
I'm a bastard. I have absolutely no clue why people can ever think
otherwise. Yet they do. People think I'm a nice guy, and the fact is that
I'm a scheming, conniving bastard who doesn't care for any hurt feelings
or lost hours of work if it just results in what I consider to be a better
system.  And I'm not just saying that. I'm really not a very nice person. 
I can say "I don't care" with a straight face, and really mean it.
        -- Linus Torvalds on linux-kernel mailing list