On Wed, Mar 07, 2007 at 03:42:33PM +0100, Frank Barknecht wrote:
Hallo, Ivica Ico Bukvic hat gesagt: // Ivica Ico Bukvic wrote:
That's not the problem. The problem is, that the current Percolate license is not a free software license. Non-free licenses are incompatible with the GPL, which flext uses. By distributing a version of Percolate externals using their current license built with GPL-flext you would be violating the GPL! So you are not allowed to distribute your flext-Percolate ATM.
Please pardon my ignorance, but will this be the case even if I distribute the ported code as source-only (assuming that I get a permission to do so from the original authors)?
I'm not a lawyer, but as I understand it, source or binary doesn't matter: As long as you distribute a flext-external, source or binary, you have to distribute it as GPL. This is impossible without violating either the Percolate license or the GPL, because both are incompatible: the Percolate license isn't a free license.
It would be good to find out what the legal status of code that is illegally licensed. We've had this issue before with the not-for-military-use clause that Yves added to his software, rendering it technically illegal. A lawyer could tell us if it's a) in legal limbo land where nobody is legally allowed to use it b) defaults to public domain c) something else weird.
Chris.
chris@mccormick.cx http://mccormick.cx