From alsa-devel-owner@alsa.jcu.cz  Wed Mar 18 05:04:36 1998
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Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 21:34:47 +0100
From: Marcus Brinkmann <Marcus.Brinkmann@ruhr-uni-bochum.de>
To: alsa-devel@jcu.cz
Subject: Copyright issue
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Hello all!

I'm quite too verbose (as I'm not long enough subscribed to this list to
be able to judge what issues are appropriate and what not), but this is an
important issue, and I was brought to this by a discussion on another list
(about libreadline and ncftp, btw).

All Copyright files I saw in the alsa code are GPL. Please excuse me if you
did choose it intentionly, and the points I will make here are known to you.
(BTW: is there an archive of this list somewhere?)

There is a significant difference between GPL and LGPL

GPL: The derived work has to carry the same copyright as the GPL. Additional
source code linked to it has to carry the same copyright or an even more
free on.

LGPL: Derived work has to carry the same copyright as the LGPL and must be a
library, too. Programs that are *linked* to this library are *not* affected
by this license. For example, you may link a commercial program with
restrictive license to a library covered by LGPL, without violating the
copyright.

The fact that alsa libs are covered by GPL means, that all programs that use
the alsalib have to carry the same copyright. No commercial program will be
allowed to link against it.

Note that libc and other libraries are covered by LGPL, while libreadline
for example is covered by GPL. The author did choose the license
intentionally. Both choices are very reasonable, although choosing GPL will
probably prevent some authors to use the alsalibs.

Example: ncftp is violating libreadlines copyright (GPL), because it is linked
against it, but ncftp is non-free software. The author has to write a
replacement or in some other way remove the use of libreadline from his
source code. On the other hand, ncftp is linked against libc (LGPL, which is
fine.

Sorry if all this was clear and I just wasted bandwidth.

Marcus


-- 
"Rhubarb is no Egyptian god."        Debian GNU/Linux        finger brinkmd@ 
Marcus Brinkmann                   http://www.debian.org    master.debian.org
Marcus.Brinkmann@ruhr-uni-bochum.de                        for public  PGP Key
http://homepage.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/Marcus.Brinkmann/       PGP Key ID 36E7CD09

