[146] in Athena User Interface
Re: License crap.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Thomas Bushnell, BSG)
Thu Jun 8 02:31:45 2000
To: Richard Tibbetts <tibbetts@MIT.EDU>
Cc: aui@MIT.EDU, tibbetts@MIT.EDU
From: tb@MIT.EDU (Thomas Bushnell, BSG)
Date: 08 Jun 2000 02:31:41 -0400
In-Reply-To: Richard Tibbetts's message of "Thu, 08 Jun 2000 01:35:35 -0400"
Message-ID: <u1hvgzk8z02.fsf@pusey.mit.edu>
Richard Tibbetts <tibbetts@MIT.EDU> writes:
> This seems a bit odd. People frequently do not distribute source for
> libraries that their software requires. For example, people will
> distribute an RPM of some GNOME program or other, offering the source,
> without offering the source to the various GNOME libraries that their
> RPM depends upon. Are these people in violation of the GPL, or is it
> somehow ok if everything involved is free software?
The RPM is linked against libraries which are distributed with the
operating system, and so they can take advantage of the exception.
There may be some cases where the library in question is not, but is
still widely available free software. In such a case they might be in
technical violation of the license, but I suspect the authors of the
software in question would not mind.
When the library is not free software, then the situation is quite
different.
