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

[Joerg Schilling]

Pierre Schmitz <pierre at 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

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