[arch-general] An old, tiresome discussion: cdrtools vs cdrkit

[Joerg Schilling]

Jan de Groot wrote:

>It seems that GPL and CDDL have some conflicting paragraphs, so even if
>CDDL allows linking to GPL with this exception, GPL doesn't allow the
>other way around.

I am not sure where you have this idea from....

The CDDL allows to combine CDDL code with other code
and the GPL permits to link any GPLv2 program against any independent
library under any license. 

Note that the GPL is an asymmetric license that disallows code based on GPLd 
software but if a program _uses_ a library, the library definitely is not based
on the program code that just uses the library code.

The common understanding of the laywers in Germany and the USA on what's happening 
when a program links against a library is that this creates a so called "collective 
work" which is not a derived work. The GPL definitely allows such collective works.

See page 114 ff. in:

http://www.rosenlaw.com/Rosen_Ch06.pdf

Lawrence Rosen is the legal advisor of the OpenSource Initiative opensource.org.

Jörg

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