Package licenses: Contemplations and considerations

[GeorgeGkountouras]

@Palli

It seems to me dynamic linking should also be derived work, or why not? It’s a technical detail, and I’m sure if I bundle say Microsoft Windows with my software, Microsoft will not be happy. I think it’s settled, I can’t bundle, and dynamically link, any proprietary software, so why wouldn’t it also apply to copyleft?

Windows is proprietary, not (A)GPL. Why would copyright law apply on copyleft licenses on the “what is bundling” question?

It’s not a technical detail when your software can run without the GPL parts.

@Palli

E.g. running software on your private server e.g. in a company is ok linking whatever to GPL (and even statically), but not for the AGPL, this “network loophole” is what it’s meant to close. It was explicitly made to do that, i.e. then argues implicitly, it’s not private work any more.

If you’re not serving it externally, AGPL is fine here.

@foobar_lv2

But if no competing implementations of the GPLed library exist, and it is essential to my proprietary program, and I happen to bundle a copy of the GPLed library with my product… then I probably have created a derivative work. And it might stop being derivative if some third party happens to create a competing implementation of the same API, unknown to me or the authors of the GPLed library.

Still not clear though. What if you use a bundled GPL library to compute a numerical result. You can also provide a return 0 shim that is not bound by the GPL. Technically it’s not a derivative work. Sure, it returns the wrong result, but there’s no law or license that says your math has to be correct! Decades of precedent point in the opposite direction: NO WARRANTIES OR GUARANTEES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED