Re: [OFFTOPIC] LGPL libbfd

[DJ Delorie <dj at delorie dot com>]

> Please prove me wrong, since if I'm correct the GPL world would be
> significantly flawed, requiring the authoring party to be just open
> source (rendering the seperating GPL-compatible GPL-incompatible totally
> useless).

IANAL, IMHO, and all those other acronyms...

The flaw in your argument is that the GPL doesn't concern itself with
executables.  It concerns itself with "works", which may consist of
more than one computer file, regardless of format.  If you build a
version of winebuild that will not function without a libbfd dynamic
library, then the winebuild executable and libbfd library together are
a single work, and the use of a GPL'd component in that work requires
that the entire work be distributed as GPL.  I don't think the fact
that libbfd is obtained elsewhere is relevent, I think the court would
look upon it as a device to circumvent the GPL and nothing more, and
dismiss it as irrelevent to the intent of the GPL.  If, instead,
libbfd were "normally distributed with the operating system" you could
claim that exception.  Do you link against the libbfd dynamic library
that is distributed with some GNU/Linux distributions?  If so, then
perhaps this is the angle you should persue, instead of your other one
about who is doing the linking.

The GPL does not limit *source* distributions this way.  If you
distributed winebuild strictly as source, the fact that it required
libbfd to build would be irrelevent wrt the GPL.

The grey area happens when the dynamic linking is done with a
published ABI, and the modules are optional.  Does a single GPL module
cause the application to become illegal?  If you write a GPL'd
photoshop plugin, must photoshop become GPL'd?  Can you distribute the
plugin without photoshop?  In the case of the linux kernel, Linus
explicitly made the exception that non-gpl'd binary modules are OK, to
avoid this grey area.  In your case, the module is not optional and
only libbfd (which is not a generic ABI) is acceptable, so I do not
think this kind of greyness applies here.