Re: glibc2/libio copyright

[Nicolas MONNET <nico@echange.fr>]

Pardon my ignorance, but what functions does exactly libio include?

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On Fri, 5 Feb 1999, Adam J. Richter wrote:

> Thank you for creating linux-legal.  I have already subscribed, and I
> have been mentioning that list in the canned response that I have had
> to develop on the glibc2/libio stuff.
> 
> Here is the background on the glibc2/libio stuff.
> 
> The copyright to the libio module in not LGPL but rather GPL with
> some additional permission that do not grant all of the rights of the
> LGPL (taken from libio/feof.c extracted from
> ftp://sourceware.cygnus.com/pub/glibc/glibc-2.0.112.tar.gz):
> 
> |   As a special exception, if you link this library with files
> |   compiled with a GNU compiler to produce an executable, this does
> |   not cause the resulting executable to be covered by the GNU General
> |   Public License.  This exception does not however invalidate any
> |   other reasons why the executable file might be covered by the GNU
> |   General Public License.
> 
> Apparently, to qualify for this exception, code must be compiled with a
> "GNU compiler" must be "an executable".  It is apparently illegal to
> distribute proprietary software compiled with, say, one of the third
> party fortran, cobol or native java compilers if they make binaries
> that link against glibc2.
> 
> It is also at least unclear to me if non-executable proprietary derivative
> works, such as third party libraries like Motif, are really legal
> when linked against glibc2 since the work is not "an executable."
> Richard Stallman has argued that the current copying conditions
> could be interpretted to allow proprietary Motif, but I'm not
> entirely sure that's enough to resolve the issue, and it's even
> less clear that non-essential non-executable derivative works, like
> optional run-time loadable modules would qualify.
> 
> Anyhow, there are some newer draft copying conditions being discussed,
> which are not as clear as something that starts with LGPL, but
> which would be improvements to the current libio copying conditions,
> and would probably address the specific scenarios that I am most
> worried about.  Still, it would greatly simplify things if they would
> go to LGPL (prhaps with their additional permissions).
> 
> Until this issue is resolved, I think we in the Linux community should
> keep our C library options as open as possible.
> 
> Adam J. Richter     __     ______________   4880 Stevens Creek Blvd, Suite 104
> adam@yggdrasil.com     \ /                  San Jose, California 95129-1034
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