RE: [ECOS] PPP status?

[Gary Thomas <gary at chez-thomas dot org>]

On Mon, 2002-06-03 at 08:40, Gustav Kälvesten wrote:
> Hi Gary,
> 
> > > Porting GPL'd code to eCos would violate the GPL license or 
> > require eCos to
> > > be GPL'd as well. E.g. the Kaffe port to eCos can not be 
> > considered to be
> > > legal. 
> > 
> > This is no longer such a concern.  As of version 2.0, eCos is now 
> > licensed by the GPL (with exception).  
> > 
> > See the latest announcements and the current anonymous CVS repository.
> 
> I don't see how that changes the situation? The GPL'd code from the outside
> still has the GPL license (without RedHat's exception).
> 
> If eCos was GPL'd without your exception it would infect the application
> developers code with GPL. But with the exception you don't but it still
> shouldn't be possible to incorporate pure GPL'd code.

IANAL either, but here's how I understand it:

While pure GPL code (with no exception) can't be incorporated into the
eCos tree (i.e. could not be distributed directly with eCos), it is now
possible to create an eCos based system with such components.  So if 
someone wanted to make a PPP stack for eCos, based on Linux (GPL) code,
it would be possible, and legal, but it would have to be kept as a 
separately distributed entity.  Any system using these components would 
have to be distributed to end users under the pure GPL and no exception 
would be possible (i.e. any additions to the eCos kernel, as well as the
application code itself, etc, would have to be distributed under the
terms of the GPL).

Under the previous (RHEPL) license, this would have not been allowed.


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