Re: mkisofs - filenames converted to lowercase

On 2010-11-29, David Brown <david@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 28/11/2010 12:04, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Aragorn wrote:
On Sunday 28 November 2010 10:55 in comp.os.linux.misc, somebody
identifying as unruh wrote...

On 2010-11-27, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

In message <8lc741F9q2U1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Joerg Schilling wrote:

I know of no single judgement that confirms the validity of the GPL.
<http://gpl-violations.org/news/20060922-dlink-judgement_frankfurt.html>

<http://gpl-violations.org/news/20050414-fortinet-injunction.html>
The GPL is a whole bunch of claims and conditions. Ruling on some (eg
source code publication) does not imply that the all are valid. Both
of these cases seem to be irrelevant regarding Schilling/Debian
battle, which has to do with linking, not with souce code publication.
The claim on Debian's behalf is that one cannot link GPL code with
CDDL code. Schilling disputes this. None of these cases address this
issue. This issue swims in the murky waters of "derived works". When
is work A considered a derived work of work B? [...]

As I understand it, a given project B is considered - at least, in
GPLv2; I don't know about GPLv3 - to be a derivative work of project A
when said project B is statically linked against project A, which, for
all intents and purposes, is pretty much the same as that project B
would include actual code from project A.

So if project B invokes code from project A by symbol substitution, then
it's not a derivative work. If it does so by literally invoking
certain code from project A - e.g. through a GPL'd library - or by
literally including code from project A in its own code, then it is
considered to be a derivative work.


That has frightening implications. That means any code that was ever
written and linked to a fee library is by definition not owned by the
guys that wrote it.


No, you are reading /way/ too much into this. Ownership in this case
means "ownership of copyrights", and is not in question.

And questions about what really is a "derived work" or not, according to
different definitions, are also pretty much irrelevant. The important
issue is what does the GPL license say you can and cannot do with other
people's software under that license.

No. The licensor has only certain rights given by copyright law. They
cannot claim rights which copyright law does not give them. The GPL
cannot claim rights above and beyond the law.
If it is not the original work in question, but is a new work, then teh
relation between that new work and some other original work it uses is
comes under the heading of "derived work". A derived work fallsunder the
copyright of both the original and the new work, and copyright in the
derived work is owned by both copyright holders. It is that aspect of
the law that the GPL uses to try to exert control over someone else's
new work. If the rights the GPL claims are too broad-- if it tries to
claim rights the law does not give it, then those aspects of the license
become null. The whole license does not become null, just those
sections. (Otherwise someone could issue a license which some minor bit
they knew was illegal, and then start suing people because the license
was invalid because that one small section was invalid).



(I know the GPLv2 best here - there may be differences with the GPLv3.)

The GPL considers software to be a "derived work" of GPL'ed software if
it is tightly bound to it - it includes the GPL'ed code in its
compilation or static or /dynamic/ linking. It is perhaps clearer if
you pretend it said "dependent work".


The GPLs definition of "derived work" is compleely irrelevant as people
keep saying. That is a term of law and cannot be defined by anyone but
the courts and the law makers. It cannot be defined by the licensor.

They simply cannot take to themselves the right to make claims that go
beyond those allowed by law and expect any court to uphold them.


So if you write a program that uses a GPL'ed dynamic linked library
(.dll or .so), then your program can only legally use the library if
your program is also available under the GPL. This doesn't mean that
the GPL'ed library is somehow asserted claims or ownership over your
program, or "infects" your program with the GPL - it simply means that
if you want to use that library, you need to follow it's license.

Consider the situation where you used a commercial library that required
royalties per use. This doesn't mean that the the commercial company
"owns" your software in any way - it just means that if you want to use
their library, you have to follow their license conditions and pay the
fee. It's the same thing with the GPL.

The only reason they can do that is under the "derived works" aspect of
copyright law. And yes, if it is a derived work, they DO own your work.
It is their copyright which applies to the work as much as it is yours.



(Actually with the GPL, the license covers distribution - you can /use/
GPL'ed software as you like for your own purposes.)

Note that the GPL explicitly excludes "mere aggregation" - you can
distribute non-GPL and GPL software together as long as they are not
tightly bound and dependent. Thus there is no problem for a Linux
distribution to include non-GPL software along with the GPL'ed stuff.

This is their half assed attempt at trying to say what the law means by
derived work. It is also an indication that they have exceeded their
rights. No law would ever even think that their license extended to
"mere aggregation". It is like them putting in a phrase that their
copyright does not apply your telephone conversations. But to the extent
that their license could seem to apply to "mere aggregation" they have
vastly exceeded what they have any right to put into their license.

Anyone can put whatever they want into a license. I could claim that
since you answered my email you owe me a million dollars, since you have
replied to my concepts. No court of law would grant me that money
however, since my claim exceeded the rights I am allowed to claim under
the law.



It's fine to /use/ GPL'ed software along with non-GPL'ed software, and
it is fine to link them together (dynamically, statically, or even in
the same compilation). But you can't then legally distribute the
binary. This is why source-code distributions like Gentoo can give you
a package that's a mixture of GPL and CDDL code, while binary
distributions like Debian cannot. It's just a simple reading of the
GPL, following both the intention of the license and the letter of the
license.

The quesiton is NOT what the GPL says. The question is what they
allowed, by law, to say.



As an example of how the GPL does /not/ make any claims over your
software, there is a possible loophole (perhaps this was closed with the
GPLv3?). Suppose you want to distribute non-GPL software that links to

GPL3 is incompatible with GPL2 which is one of the reasons why Linus
refuses to use GPL3 for the kernel.
Were your interetation valid, Linux could contain no GPL3 software.


GPL libraries. You cannot distribute the binaries together, but you may
be able to distribute just your own software binaries, and require users
to get the libraries separately. You will almost certainly lose your
rights to distribute the GPL'ed libraries by doing this, so you can't
just make them a separate download link, but I think you are legally in
the clear - /you/ are not linking your program with GPL'ed libraries, it
is the end use who is doing so. And as long as that end user is not
distributing the combined software, no license has been violated.


The LGPL, which was also mentioned in a post, is slightly different.
The basic requirement to distribute code that makes use of LGPL'ed
software is that the end user must have access to the source of the
LGPL'ed code, be able to modify that code, and use that modified code
with the rest of the program. Typically that means the LGPL'ed code is
in a dynamic library that can be updated independently of the
non-(L)GPL'ed code. But it's also possible to use static linking, in
which case the non-(L)GPL'ed code also has to be available in a linkable
format or source format. Non-gpl'ed source code, such as provided under
the CDDL, is fine.



Microsoft ergo would have rights to anything that runs on windows thats
beenm compiled against their libraries.


That judgement is tantamount to saying that the rights to a book are
with the firm that made the paper.


No, it's a bit like the paper firm saying "You can only buy our paper to
print books. If you want to make paper aeroplanes, buy paper from
someone else". The analogy is not very accurate, however, since the GPL
is about distribution rather than use.

And it is probably beyond copyright law to use it tolimit what the user
can do with the material. copyright law applies only to copying, not
use.


.

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