Re: LGPL v3 compatibilty (original) (raw)

Mike Hommey wrote:

On Mon, Jul 16, 2007 at 08:39:10AM +0100, M?ns Rullg?rd mans@mansr.com wrote:

No. The kernel is completely self-contained. Some code may of course have been borrowed from glibc at some point, but that's irrelevant.

Borrowed code is relevant, because you can't borrow code and change its license without authorization. What makes it irrelevant is that the borrowed code is LGPL'ed. And LGPL code can happily be relicensed to GPL, as stated in the LGPL text. Thus the kernel code that was borrowed from glibc is GPL.

What's relevant here is that it was borrowed from an LGPL v2 library into a GPL v2 project. If a later version of glibc is licensed solely under GPLv3, that won't affect the borrowed code that is in the kernel.

If the GPLv2 kernel somehow used an LGPLv3 library, things would get interesting.

Arnoud

-- Arnoud Engelfriet, Dutch & European patent attorney - Speaking only for myself Patents, copyright and IPR explained for techies: http://www.iusmentis.com/ Arnoud blogt nu ook: http://blog.iusmentis.com/

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