[cc-community] GNU-GPL, makefiles, and non-distributed executables

Rob Myers rob at robmyers.org
Sat Dec 15 09:04:10 EST 2007


IANAL, TINLA.

Greg London wrote:

> Eve compiles the object files together on her computer. Alice makes Eve
> agree to not distribute the resulting executable.

I would think that the agreement not to distribute breaks the GPL.

And if Alice's code is designed to work only when linked to GPL-ed 
software then it will have "carnal knowledge" of that software's APIs. 
This makes it a derivative of the GPL-ed software anyway. Since Alice 
has to distribute/propagate this derivative in order to get it to Eve 
this will trigger the source provision requirements.

So Eve is basically receiving a derivative of a GPL-ed work without an 
offer for the source code, under a proprietary licence, and under a 
non-distribution agreement. This is much breakage of the GPL.

> Question:
> 
> Does this satisfy the GNU-GPL applied to George's code?
> 
> I thought it would. But I was discussing this recently with another open
> source enthusiast, and they were certain this couldn't satisfy the
> license.
> 
> If it doesn't, can someone explain?

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/pragmatic.html

"Consider GNU Objective C. NeXT initially wanted to make this front end 
proprietary; they proposed to release it as .o files, and let users link 
them with the rest of GCC, thinking this might be a way around the GPL's 
requirements. But our lawyer said that this would not evade the 
requirements, that it was not allowed. And so they made the Objective C 
front end free software."

If Steve Jobs's lawyers didn't want to push the point I don't recommend 
that Alice does. ;-)

Ask Brett at the FSF for more information, he's their licence compliance 
officer: licensing at fsf.org

- Rob.


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