Asterisk and the DFSG

[Jose Carlos Garcia Sogo]

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El vie, 04-03-2005 a las 12:53 -0600, Brooks R. Robinson escribi=C3=B3:
> Greetings,
> 	Okay, so I'm poking through the source of Asterisk and I thought for
> giggles that I'd be quaint to actually read the README.  I get to this
> point:
>=20
> <snip>
> * LICENSING
>   Asterisk is distributed under GNU General Public License.  The GPL also
> must apply to all loadable modules as well, except as defined below.
> <snip>
>=20
> 	It then occurs to me that the phrase "The GPL also must apply to all
> loadable modules as well..."  may violate the DFSG.  In general (since I
> can't find anything specific), I think that it falls under article 9,
> "License Must Not Contaminate Other Software".  The words "must" and "all=
"
> are killers.  The rest of the license states that you can ask them for a
> license, blah, blah, blah.  So, if I want to write a module that isn't GP=
L,
> even if I want it to be BSD, etc., I'm in violation by loading it.  Any
> thoughts?

 DFSG point 9 doesn't say that, but:
License Must Not Contaminate Other Software=20

The license must not place restrictions on other software that is
distributed along with the licensed software. For example, the license
must not insist that all other programs distributed on the same medium
must be free software.

 The above point says that a license cannot impose restrictions in other
software distributed with the licenced one. A plugin is different, as it
is linkend and somehow a derived work of licensed software. GPL says
that if you distribute a derived work of a GPL work, you have to
redistribute sources and also as GPL. It doesn't say as "as GPL or other
GPL compatible licenses".=20

  Or at least that is what I understand. I am not really a GPL expert.

  Regards,

--=20
Jose Carlos Garcia Sogo
   jsogo@debian.org

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