Misunderstanding GPL's terms and conditions as restrictions
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell at gmail.com
Wed Jul 30 17:12:39 UTC 2008
Alexandre Oliva wrote:
> On Jul 29, 2008, Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> No, RSAREF couldn't have been modified. It had restricted
>> distribution and everyone had to get their own copy.
>
> http://groups.google.com/group/gnu.misc.discuss/browse_thread/thread/ecc4d4ff360019e/b3dbb6f89144b706?lnk=st&q=gnu.misc.discuss+ripem#b3dbb6f89144b706
>
> http://www.nic.funet.fi/index/crypt/cryptography/rpem/ripem/
> http://www.nic.funet.fi/index/crypt/cryptography/rpem/ripem/README
> http://www.nic.funet.fi/index/crypt/cryptography/rpem/ripem/rsaref/
>
>
> There is indeed a lot of conflicting information out there, and the
> files above are older than the discussion, but the point stands that
> some piece of software could only be distributed under the GPL, and by
> people who had accepted a patent license that prevented them from
> doing just that, regardless of any copyright license
> incompatibilities.
The origin of fgmp should be when the discussion was resolved, probably
1993'ish. And the point was, and is, that the GPL makes really free
software distribution difficult or impossible even when source is
available for everything. Note that it was Stallman himself leading the
charge against this free distribution, and probably against the wishes
of the gmp author(s) if that wasn't him. Later the license on the gmp
library was changed to lgpl. I assume someone learned about the
harmful effect of the gpl from this experience and chose to reduce it,
but even so, there are still reasons that force others to duplicate the
work:
http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/ReplacingGMPNotes#ReasonsforReplacingGMPastheBignumlibrary
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell at gmail.com
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