GPL as an evaluation license

[Aviad Mandel]

On Sun, Apr 10, 2011 at 8:28 PM, Oleg Goldshmidt <pub at goldshmidt.org> wrote:

>
> This looks to me (reminder: IANAL) as a rather simplistic attempt to
> circumvent GPL. I cannot believe that this trick is legal.
>

I'm likewise skeptic. But if this is illegal, and I don't understand why,
then there's still an important lesson to learn.


>
> Typically, however, the B part will contain pieces that use the A
> library - without those pieces the library will not be needed. The
> rest is a legal (copyright) question: does this make B a "derivative
> work"?
>

My question is: Does it matter? Business B owns the B part, so it doesn't
need any permission to distribute the code. No copyright infringement, no
need for license.

In the wildest scenario, you could claim that the names of the API functions
are copyrighted. So make a wrapper, release it under GPL. Now you own the
rights for the new API function names as well.

Part A can be distributed anyhow as sources, so there's no problem here
either. Nobody could claim that there's a problem distributing GPLed sources
alongside with anything.

So where's the catch? Can a compilation be seen as a copyright infringement?
After all, strings from the sources are copied to the binary, for example.
Or is there any EULA-style restriction I'm not aware of? The binary must not
be copied further of course, but who cares at this point?
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