Re: Dual-Licensing Linux Kernel with GPL V2 and GPL V3

Alexandre Oliva
2007-06-15T02:27:23Z

On Jun 14, 2007, Bill Nottingham <notting@redhat.com> wrote:

> Alexandre Oliva (aoliva@redhat.com) said:
>> And since the specific implementation involves creating a derived work
>> of the GPLed kernel (the signature, or the signed image, or what have
>> you)

> Wait, a signed filesystem image that happens to contain GPL code
> is now a derived work? Under what sort of interpretation does *that*
> occur?

Is the signature not derived from the bits in the GPLed component, as
much as it is derived from the key?

Isn't the signature is a functional portion of the image, i.e., if I
take it out from the system, it won't work any more?

> (This pretty much throws the 'aggregation' premise in GPLv2 completely
> out.)

Not really. It could take some explicit distinguishing between
functional and non-functional signatures, but that's about it.

GPLv3 chose a different path to make this clarification.

--
Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
FSF Latin America Board Member http://www.fsfla.org/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}
Free Software Evangelist oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}