Re: [BackupPC-users] Best of breed.

[Les M. <les...@gm...>]

On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 11:39 AM, G.W. Haywood
<ba...@ju...> wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> On Thu, 7 Mar 2013 09:42:48 -0600 Les Mikesell
> in thread "BackupPC Pool synchronization?" wrote:
>
>> ... I've always considered it to be extremely unfortunate how the
>> GPL prevents assembling 'best-of-breed' components together for
>> distribution.
>
> To my shame, I'm not familiar with the GPL.  Would you explain?

The GPL leverages copyright law that prohibits redistributing a work
or anything that might be considered a derivative work without
permission by restricting that permission with specific rules in the
license.  One is that you must redistribute the source code if you
distribute binaries, and that includes all components of the 'derived
work', not just what you added.  And, it must all be covered by the
GPL terms, permitting additional redistribution under the same
terms/restrictions.   This means that existing code covered by
incompatible licenses cannot be combined with anything covered by the
GPL even if that other code has less restrictions. I don't think there
has been an actual court case decided where some components are
distributed separately but clearly intended for use in combination
with a GPL-covered work, but the FSF lawyers have at least threatened
action.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
     les...@gm...