Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Watch out for license changes to GPL-3.

[Jeroen Roovers <jer@gentoo.org>]

On Mon, 09 Jul 2007 10:31:23 +0100
Steve Long <slong@rathaus.eclipse.co.uk> wrote:

> IMO though, Gentoo is effectively already under GPL3 in that, apart
> from portage and python, all the core software is GNU. It'd be pretty
> difficult for instance, to run any ebuild without BASH.

It's not a matter of opinion whether Gentoo (sys-apps/portage, the
ebuilds and so on) are GPL -2 or -3. Running your own copyrighted works
on Gentoo does not "effectively" mean that your works are suddenly
held to the same license as Gentoo. There's a complicated discussion
about derived works that I won't go into here, but Gentoo, the Linux
distribution, is distributed under many licenses, whereas Gentoo the
package management system / Portage tree is distributed under one
license -- GPL-2. Whether all the system utils or the kernel are GPL-3
is of no consequence to the package manager or the Portage tree.

Lastly, appreciating that (most) ebuilds require bash to be interpreted
does *not* make them derivative works of bash in accepted readings of
international copyright law. Therefore, the license of bash be(com)ing
GPL-3 does not preclude ebuilds being (and remaining) GPL-2.


Kind regards,
     JeR
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