Re: Questions

[Daniel Veillard <veillard redhat com>]

On Wed, Dec 05, 2001 at 02:48:23AM -0700, Richard Stallman wrote:
>     Of course, most of my work is currently in the X server: we won't accept
>     GPL there under any circumstances, due to its "infectious" behavior. 
> 
> The idea that the GPL is "infectious" or works "like a virus" is a
> very colorful way to express a common misconception about the GPL.
> The GPL does not "spread" by mere proximity, the way a virus does.  It

<off-topic>
  Depends on the virus, AIDS does NOT "spread" by mere proximity, this is
also an unfortunately common misconception ... I would avoid saying this
in public either, and it has far more dramatic effects than the viral vs. 
flower perception of a software licence.
</off-topic>

> spreads by transplantation and combination of code: if you copy some
> GPL-covered code into your program, the GPL comes with it.

  Actually the GNOME platform is in it's most part provided under the
LGPL which avoid this issue. This is actually a very important feature
of the platform (the platform being the set of GNOME libraries used to
built the desktop and associated applications, which themselves can use
a different licence as long as it's compatible with the LGPL).

  Instead of fighting over the way one qualifies licences, I think there
is a productive debate to have in that domain w.r.t. Bonobo. While there
is no incentive in the project to try to change the LGPL or similar rule
for the libraries in the platform, Bonobo components are a different kind
of libraries. While they can be linked with the application using the
linker when building binaries, they can also be selected dynamically
*upon user demand* to provide some capabilities of the program. Like for
kernel modules this blurs the line between what is within the application
or not. The questions I have as a result:
   - should the GNOME project requires that Bonobo components be released
     under the LGPL to be part of the platform (I tend to think so)
   - how do we deal with licence compatibility between the applications
     and the Bonobo components.

  An interesting example would be a closed source application with a 
built-in bonobo component to render HTML pages, but allowing the user
to pick up his component of choice to render them in a preferred way
(like Nautilus does). If there is an HTML bonobo component provided in
the user's desktop but released under the GPL, would the user selecting
that component for use in this application a Licence infrigement ? If yes
how would the user know ? And how should this issue be handled in practice
without making this a nightmare for the users ?

Daniel

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