Pierre Schmitz <pierre@archlinux.de> wrote:
The point is that nobody of us can proof for sure if it's legal or not. So it's quite pointless to continue arguing here.
We will not be able to advance in case that a single person insists in applying rules that are in conflict with legal basics. Do you really like OSS to become vulnerable against FUD from hostile people?
Personally I have no objections against having a cdrtools package in our repository if someone wants to maintain it.
Licenses are important, but one shouldn't be too picky about it. If I remember correctly the initial question was if it is legal to distribute a GPL licensed software build with CCDL licenses build system. Both licenses are 100% free and both parts have the same author.
Well as written many times in the past already, this is a question that is extremely easy to answer: The GPL claims to be a valid OSS license. In order to become a valid OSS license, a license must not only follow the weak rules from the FSF but also follow the more stringent rules from the OpenSource initiative: http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php The OSI did mark the GPL as a non-free license some years ago because some people from the FSF did write strange claims about the GPL. As a reaction, the FSF replied that the GPL has to be interpreted in a way that makes it compliant to: http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php We for this reason may safely asume that the GPL of course allows to publish two independent OSS projects in a single archive. See OSS definition paragraph 9. See the comment from the OSI in http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php Note that I did also send a pointer to the interpretation of the GPL made by Lawrence Rosen (the legal counsellor of the OSI) http://www.rosenlaw.com/Rosen_Ch06.pdf I also have a private mail from Eben Moglen that confirms that a claim that a GPL project may not use a build system under a diffeent license ist just nonsense. How many proofs do you like to get? Jörg -- EMail:joerg@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin js@cs.tu-berlin.de (uni) joerg.schilling@fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily