License change for ghostscript

[Ville Skyttä]

On Friday 31 July 2009, Tim Waugh wrote:
> On Fri, 2009-07-31 at 22:47 +0300, Ville Skyttä wrote:
> > This might cause problems for a bunch of packages.
> >
> > $ repoquery --repoid=rawhide --whatrequires --alldeps ghostscript
> > ghostscript- gtk --qf="%{NAME}: %{LICENSE}" | grep -vP '\bGPL(v3|\S*\+)'
> > | sort
>
> Wouldn't it be packages using the libraries that might pose problems?

That's one interpretation (or to be more exact, stuff that _links_ with 
ghostscript's libraries - dlopen()ing might be another story).  Fedora/Red Hat 
legal have the official one as far as Fedora is concerned and I *guess* it is 
indeed that one.

> The ImageMagick license seems to be compatible with GPLv3.

I'll steal this space to point out that I don't think it's widely enough 
understood what "GPL compatibility" means.  Personally I've found it helpful 
to think of it as "can be GPL-assimilated".  (This is nothing new with GPLv3 
BTW.)

An ImageMagick build that is linked with GPL'd ghostscript is actually 
distributable only as a _GPL'd_ combined work, and is no longer distributable 
under the ImageMagick license (otherwise other apps could use ImageMagick as a 
proxy to circumvent the ghostscript's GPL).  http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-
faq.html#WhatDoesCompatMean

This has nasty cascading effects considering that the ImageMagick license and 
GPL are quite different; for example the ImageMagick license does not consider 
things that link with ImageMagick as derivative works.

I think/hope the next round of licensing work in Fedora will take stuff like 
this into account so we can all "enjoy" GPL's viral/assimilating nature to its 
full extent :P

(I think it goes without saying, but IANAL.)