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

[Allan McRae]

On 26/01/10 01:19, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> 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.

The FSF interprets that quite differently.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#GPLIncompatibleLicenses

	This is a free software license. It has a copyleft with a scope
	that's similar to the one in the Mozilla Public License, which
	makes it incompatible with the GNU GPL. This means a module
	covered by the GPL and a module covered by the CDDL cannot
	legally be linked together. We urge you not to use the CDDL for
	this reason.


So the debate as it stands is:

FSF says no
Sun says yes

Now, the FSF has an interest in the GPL as Sun does in the CDDL. So 
these answers are probably not completely unbiased.  At least one answer 
is wrong...  the obvious key is knowing which, and we really are not in 
a position to find out ourselves.

So the only solution I can see is to cover out asses and just not 
distribute cdrtools.

Allan