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List:       kde
Subject:    RE: Forward of posting from RMS
From:       Bryan Brunton3 <bryan-kde () flesherfab ! com>
Date:       1998-07-14 15:12:57
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IMO, RMS and all others who propose an interpretation
of the GPL that juggles which percentage of which distros
commonly distribute which "system files" in an attempt 
to define the "norm" have completely no understanding of
what the open nature of linux would mean in a court of law.

No judge in his/her right mind in going to attempt a silly
study of the "norm" in this example.  Due to linux's open 
nature the "norm" is almost whatever I say it is.  There can be
no empirical study of a "normal" linux installation.  The very 
concept makes almost no sense.  Judge's, at least in the US,
hate to define "normal" and would see this immediately.  One 
only needs to look at the recent MS anti-trust case to see how 
little Judges want to touch defining a "normal".

This is not that conservative of a view point for anyone who knows
any judicial history.  RMS is just dead wrong.

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Martin Konold [SMTP:konold@alpha.tat.physik.uni-tuebingen.de]
> Sent:	Monday, July 13, 1998 3:09 PM
> To:	KDE general mailing list
> Subject:	Forward of posting from RMS
> 
> 
> >From: Richard Stallman <rms@santafe.edu>
> >To: forgeltd@usa.net, gnome-hackers@nuclecu.unam.mx,
> kde@lists.netcentral.net
> >To: alan@cymru.net
> >Cc: rms@santafe.edu
> 
> >
> >People have been talking about when a library is "part of the
> >operating system".  The GPL does not actually use that criterion.
> >Here are the precise words:
> >
> >      However, as a
> >    special exception, the source code distributed need not include
> >    anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary
> >    form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of
> the
> >    operating system on which the executable runs, unless that
> component
> >    itself accompanies the executable.
> >
> >In other words, if a library is normally distributed with Linux, with
> >GCC, or with some other specific major system component, then you can
> >link with it and not have to provide source code with it.  "Normally
> >distributed with" means that the two normally go together--if you get
> >the major component, you normally get the library with it.
> >
> >These words in the GPL are not as clear as they ought to be.  When I
> >wrote them, I was thinking of cases like Solaris, where a particular
> >company decides what comes with the kernel and what comes with the
> >compiler.  It is completely clear, in this case, which libraries
> >normally come with what components: you just look at what this
> company
> >does.
> >
> >With GNU and Linux, the situation is not so clear: the major system
> >components such as Linux and GCC are distributed by various people
> >along with various different things.  This is a sufficient problem
> >that I ought to clarify these words whenever I write GPL version 3;
> >but the range of uncertainty is limited, and not as broad as some
> >might think.
> >
> >The SuSE and Caldera distributions may be so widely used that one
> >could argue that whatever they do is the normal thing.  Perhaps Qt
> >normally comes with Linux, the kernel, simply because that's true
> when
> >you get it from SuSE or Caldera.  I'm not sure I believe this.  As a
> >result, I am no longer convinced that the inclusion of Qt in the
> >system by SuSE makes it permissible to link GPL-covered programs with
> >Qt.
> >
> >What is completely clear is that distributing a few copies is not
> >enough to establish a new norm.  So you can distribute a copy of
> Linux
> >or GCC and some non-free libfoo.a together, if you wish, but doing
> >this a few times will not make it true that libfoo.a *normally* comes
> >with the kernel or compiler.
> 
> -- 
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