What is free software? [Re: Licenses and Open Source don't conflict.]

[Paul Rubin]

Gerhard Häring <gerhard at bigfoot.de> writes:
> > Another reason often given (by the misinformed) is that GPL code can
> > somehow "infect" non-GPL free code (BSD let's say); it goes something
> > like this: Bob writes an excellent library and releases it under the
> > BSD license.  George has his previously mentioned GPL'd library, which
> > is also most cool.  Fred comes along, and writes a program which uses
> > both Bob's and George's libraries, and for some reason Fred actually
> > incorporates the library source in his project rather than expecting
> > you to separately install it.  Fred must release his program under the
> > GPL (he has no choice in this matter).
> 
> This is wrong. Fed must release his program under a Free Software
> license (see the FSF page I mentioned in a previous posting for a
> listing of those). So Fred can release his program under a
> BSD/Python-like license, too.

That's incorrect; from section 2 of the GPL:

        b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in
        whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any
        part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third
        parties under the terms of this License...

    These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole.  If
    identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program,
    and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in
    themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those
    sections when you distribute them as separate works.  But when you
    distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based
    on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of
    this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the
    entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.

The "this License" above refers to the GPL.  So if Fred's program
incorporates George's GPL'd library, Fred's program must itself be
GPL'd.  If Fred doesn't want to follow George's conditions, he is of
course free to decide to not use George's library.  

There's a separate "Lesser GPL" that you might be thinking of, used
for some libraries, which have more relaxed conditions the full GPL.
The decision of which license to use on a given library is up to the
library author--some choose the GPL and some choose the LGPL.

Hope-this-helps-'ly yours,
phr