Andreas Cadhalpun <[email protected]> writes: > Correct me if I am wrong, but I think that if one uses the source of a > GPL licensed program to build another program, this has to be > distributed under the GPL as well. (Section 2. b) of the GPL)
That's roughly correct; the act which requires licensing the whole work under GPL is to distribute a “derivative work” of the prior GPL-licensed work; see <URL:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work>. The corollary is that if the derived work is not distributed under terms compatible with the GPL, the recipient has *no* effective license in the work – and, indeed, the party redistributing has no license to do so, and is themselves violating the GPL of the prior work. > If that is true, is it allowed to simply use the chroma source, as if > the COPYING contained the GPL v2, or is it necessary to contact the > author of chroma and request a change of the COPYING file? If their work is derived from a work they received under GPL, then “chroma” may be redistributed only under GPL-compatible terms (e.g., the GPL itself), otherwise they are violating copyright on the GPL-licensed work and “chroma” recipients have no effective license. -- \ “When I get new information, I change my position. What, sir, | `\ do you do with new information?” —John Maynard Keynes | _o__) | Ben Finney -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected] Archive: http://lists.debian.org/[email protected]
