[Mimedefang] GPLv3

[Kees Theunissen]

On Mon, 2 Jul 2007, David F. Skoll wrote:

>Kevin A. McGrail wrote:
>
>> So fundamentally, I think MIMEDefang and any derivitive works (very
>> likely including CanIT) might completely fall under a much broader
>> license than RP probably wants.  I know that what RP does in providing
>> CanIT counts as distribution.  So I think the code for CanIT might have
>> to be public.
>
>No.  MIMEDefang no longer remotely contains any MIME-Tools code.  You
>can check by looking at the MIME::Tools package.

Hmm, the problem could be bigger than that.
I was just looking at te gpl-faq at
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#IfInterpreterIsGPL

    Another similar and very common case is to provide libraries with
    the interpreter which are themselves interpreted. For instance,
    Perl comes with many Perl modules, and a Java implementation comes
    with many Java classes. These libraries and the programs that call
    them are always dynamically linked together.

    A consequence is that if you choose to use GPL'd Perl modules or
    Java classes in your program, you must release the program in a
    GPL-compatible way, regardless of the license used in the Perl or
    Java interpreter that the combined Perl or Java program will run on.

This claims that the sole use of GPL'd perl modules would make a perl
program a "work based on that GPL'd modules".
It's only the FAQ, not the Gnu GPL. I don't even know if this is
GPLv3 specific or not. I was linked to the FAQ from: http://gplv3.fsf.org/
which says: "The GPL FAQ has already been updated ...."

This is a subject that should be handled _very_ careful.

Regards,

Kees.

-- 
Kees Theunissen
F.O.M.-Institute for Plasma Physics Rijnhuizen, Nieuwegein, Netherlands
E-mail: theuniss at rijnh.nl,  Tel: (+31|0)306096724,  Fax: (+31|0)306031204