Re: The purpose of the "license" list of a Guix package (Was: Re: Jam: which licence is this?)

[Maxime Devos]

Leo Prikler schreef op za 08-05-2021 om 12:16 [+0200]:
> [... something about dependencies and copyleft ...]
> [...]
> However, compliance is not *that* simple.  If you're dealing with
> copyleft, providing the source is not enough, you also need to license
> your own work under that copyleft license, e.g. the GPL. [...]

Just checking if our understanding is the same, as I have seen a discussion
on IRC where people the situation described below was _not_ legally acceptable.

Suppose we have a GPLv3+ library, say guile-jwt.
Suppose there is a (group of) developer(s) writing an application using
guile-jwt. Let's call the application APP, and the developer(s) DEV.

A hypothetical situation:

  * Suppose DEV is not very fond of licensing APP under a copyleft license,
    and insteads prefers something with basically no licenses.
  * DEV wants to choose, say, license:expat.
  * license:expat is not license:gpl3
  * Would this be a problem? I would think not. While APP used guile-jwt,
    it doesn't include or modify its source code.

    So I would think DEV
    must still respect GPL for the combination (e.g., if DEV provides binaries
    for APP, they must include source code for guile-jwt *and* APP),
    and theoretically someone may fork APP to replace guile-jwt with
    a hypothetical guile-jwt/expat, and at that point the GPL doesn't
    apply anymore to the combination APP-with-guile-jwt/expat.

    <insert standard IANAL disclaimer here>

I would find it interesting to know if some ‘legal people’ have worked out
this situation.

Greetings,
Maxime.

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