Integration with GPL v2



  • Hello all,

    I'm working on a project which I've released under the Apache license v2. I've found another project that has 2 functions that I could utilize rather than reinventing the wheel. The software in question has been released under the GNU GPL v2

    My question: (How) can I utilize this bit while keeping my software under the Apache license?


  • FoxDev

    based on my limited non-lawyery understanding of the GPL.... you can't.

    once something's licensed GPL you need to be licensed GPL to use it....

    this is the license i use:
    Creative Commons License
    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.



  • Well, it depends. I believe non-GPL stuff can normally link into GPL stuff, but you can't include the GPL stuff in your source or as a statically-linked library.

    IANAL.



  • Is this other project a library/module (intended for reuse), or are you planning to copypasta?


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    Couldn't you just list it as a pre-req for compiling? Or include instructions on how to include it in the project? Or are you wanting to release an executable?

    If you want to include the source in yours, then you have to change your license to GPL. There is no way around it. Not legally anyway.



  • Thanks to everybody for the responses. I contacted the developer, and he's fine with the inclusion. This is an interpretive language (PHP) library that I was needing to poll some data from a standard service. Because it's not compiled, what I've done is created a folder in lib called 3rdparty, created a folder for his scripts, trimmed down his scripts to just the functions (removing the runtime stuff) and will just do a simple include.

    Also, in lib/3rdpart/HIS_PRODUCT/, I've added his license in LICENSE file, so it keeps his attributions.

    Because this isn't compiled, I wasn't sure if I could include it without my software also being GLP.



  • Find a BSD-licensed library with equivalent functionality and use it instead of the GPL one?


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @jonsjava said:

    Thanks to everybody for the responses. I contacted the developer, and he's fine with the inclusion.

    I would get that in writing. You do not want this guy:

    on your case...



  • LMAO

    I have it in writing.



  • Stallman won't care if both developers agree. Mixing GPL and non-GPL software makes you literally Hitler regardless of circumstances.

    You know, because freedom.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @anonymous234 said:

    Stallman won't care if both developers agree. Mixing GPL and non-GPL software makes you literally Hitler regardless of circumstances.

    You know, because freedom.

    On the bright side, we will not have to worry about him seeing this because if we think that Discourse is painful on late-gen smartphones, could you imagine it on a Leemote Yeelong?



  • From what I've heard, he literally downloads webpages via terminal and opens them offline. So... good luck.


  • Garbage Person

    Have you seen his speaking engagement rider?

    Particularly amusing quote:

    If you would like to put my speech on the Internet, or distribute it in digital form, I insist on using the formats of the free software community: Ogg Vorbis or Ogg Speex format for audio, and Matroska VP8 (Webm) or Ogg Theora for video. Please do not distribute my speech in any other format.

    Please do not ever broadcast or publish my speeches in formats that
    are not good for free software. I will not speak to make a recording
    or broadcast that requires non-free software to be heard or viewed.
    Don't use RealPlayer format, or Quicktime, or Windows Media Player
    format, or a patented format such as MPEG2, MPEG4, or MP3.

    This requirement is very important, because if it is not followed,
    viewing my speech will require people to do the exact opposite of what
    I ask them to do. The medium's message would contradict my message.

    Nevermind that some people might not be on the Free Software(TM) bandwagon yet, and would therefore need to hear about Free Software(TM) to go obtain something to view Lord RMS' speech. Yep. OGG/VP8 ONLY. God forbid you also allow the choice of non-Free(TM) formats.



  • That stuff is why the FSF is such a joke. It's all "Rules are bad, m'kay, unless I came up with them," and "Stick it to The Man! Follow me instead!"

    On the bright side, if those are his requirements I'd really have to go out of my way to view a recorded version of an RMS speech. His crazy ideology is somewhat self-limiting.



  • Makes me glad I don't organize events at which I might (not) want to invite him to eat toe jam in publicspeak.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    I scanned over that rider, and maybe it is somewhat standard, etc? I do know that if I had never booked someone to speak and read a rider (I haven't), and that is my first experience with it, I would probably explore another line of work. Or invite Linus Torvalds, he does not seem like such a prissy bitch.

    Richard Stallman sounds like a fucking mogwai in that rider. Temperatures have to be in a narrow range, prefers to stay on someone's couch, specific requirements for recording, very specific ways to be paid, etc.



  • That gets very weirdly specific in places:

    @RMS said:

    Dogs that bark angrily and/or jump up on me frighten me, unless they
    are small and cannot reach much above my knees. But if they only bark
    or jump when we enter the house, I can cope, as long as you hold the
    dog away from me at that time. Aside from that issue, I'm ok with
    dogs.

    At least he like parrots:

    @RMS said:

    DON'T buy a parrot figuring that it will be a fun surprise for me. To
    acquire a parrot is a major decision: it is likely to outlive you. If
    you don't know how to treat the parrot, it could be emotionally
    scarred and spend many decades feeling frightened and unhappy.


  • Garbage Person

    @mott555 said:

    On the bright side, if those are his requirements I'd really have to go out of my way to view a recorded version of an RMS speech. His crazy ideology is somewhat self-limiting.
    The first time I read the thing, I was all "Wat? I SHOULD SET UP A PIRATE REPOSITORY OF RMS SPEECHES!"

    And then I saw a squirrel.

    Please do not ever mail me a file larger than 100k without asking me first. I almost certainly do not want to receive it in that form. If you would like feedback or approval for proposed publicity, please talk with rms-assist about it, not with me. If you want to give me data about airplane tickets, please send that info as plain ASCII text, not as images or PDFs. Thank you.
    I do not eat breakfast. Please do not ask me any questions about what I will do breakfast. Please just do not bring it up.
    I do NOT use browsers, I use the SSH protocol. If the network requires a proxy for SSH, I probably can't use it at all.
    Above 72 fahrenheit (22 centigrade) I find sleeping quite difficult. (If the air is dry, I can stand 23 degrees.) A little above that temperature, a strong electric fan blowing on me enables me to sleep. More than 3 degrees above that temperature, I need air conditioning to sleep.
    If you buy bus or train tickets for me, do not give my name! Big Brother has no right to know where I travel, or where you travel, or where anyone travels.
    Warning about giveways:

    You may find companies offering you CD-ROMs, books, fliers or
    publicity materials to give away or sell at my speech. Please check
    them before you accept them, to make sure that they don't promote the
    very thing that we are working to replace.

    For instance, the CDs may contain non-free software. Most distros of
    GNU/Linux contain or suggest non-free software in addition to the free
    software. (And most of them call the system "Linux".) Please check
    with me before you allow a CD of GNU/Linux to be distributed at the
    event.



  • Are those real?


  • Garbage Person

    @Intercourse said:

    I scanned over that rider, and maybe it is somewhat standard, etc? I do know that if I had never booked someone to speak and read a rider (I haven't), and that is my first experience with it, I would probably explore another line of work. Or invite Linus Torvalds, he does not seem like such a prissy bitch.
    The don't-contradict-the-message stuff is pretty standard and almost understandable even if, when examined in the cold light of imperfect reality where not everyone is already a FSF acolyte, it hurts more than it helps.

    Once it descends into his personal needs, it gets batshit.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    I do not eat breakfast. Please do not ask me any questions aboutwhat I will do breakfast. Please just do not bring it up.

    Jesus Christ, I rarely eat breakfast either, but I am not touchy about it if someone brings it up. Just say, "No thank you" and move on with your life.

    You would think that his mother was smothered in a pancake mountain incident or something.


  • Garbage Person

    Incidentally, that github is a history of stuff he's added to the rider. So you can see the evolution of the derp.

    From the project readme:

    ==License==

    Curiously, I've never seen a GFDL tag attached to RMS's rider. As such I assume
    that all fulltext riders are Copyright of RMS, as he is the author. Unless you
    consider the rider to be a part of the speaking engagement, for which RMS would
    have been paid. In that case it may be fair to assume that the riders are part
    of a work for hire, and without explict declaration of copyright each rider is
    copyright of the organisation who hosted the event.



  • Is it available with composer or similar?

    You could make it a dependency in your composer file and then you code is technically separate.



  • The funniest thing I've read in ages. That guy is fucking crazy.



  • Yeah, it ranks up there with [url=http://bash.org/?791]this[/url].


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Weng said:

    The don't-contradict-the-message stuff is pretty standard and almost understandable even if, when examined in the cold light of imperfect reality where not everyone is already a FSF acolyte, it hurts more than it helps.

    Once it descends into his personal needs, it gets batshit.

    You guys must never have been to The Smoking Gun and looked and musician's riders. Frankly, RMS' isn't all that weird, in comparison.



  • Final follow-up regarding the original question:

    The developer has offered to release the needed libraries under Apache to resolve any issues I might have including it with my code.

    TL;DR: It's a non-issue now.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    But we got to complain about RMS anyway, so the thread wasn't a waste of time. 😉



  • @FrostCat said:

    You guys must never have been to The Smoking Gun and looked and musician's riders. Frankly, RMS' isn't all that weird, in comparison.

    Maybe so, but at least recording artists let people use sensible formats for their audio content.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @hungrier said:

    Maybe so, but at least recording artists let people use sensible formats for their audio content.

    Do iTunes and WMP not play OGG? I thought they did. At that point, griping because RMS wants certain file formats seems to be more like kibitzing.



  • @FrostCat said:

    Do iTunes and WMP not play OGG? I thought they did. At that point, griping because RMS wants certain file formats seems to be more like kibitzing.

    Besides, Ogg isn't nearly as wild-eyed as you're thinking -- I have seen AAA games use it for ingame music things before.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @tarunik said:

    Besides, Ogg isn't nearly as wild-eyed as you're thinking -- I have seen AAA games use it for ingame music things before.

    I don't think it's wild-eyed at all--I've known about it a long time, and it's been around--the part of Wikipedia I skimmed has a date in 2000--for even longer.

    But commercial stuff, of course, doesn't come in that format so most people don't know about it.



  • @FrostCat said:

    You guys must never have been to The Smoking Gun and looked and musician's riders.

    Except when you invite musicians, you get a load of people having great fun while they rock the fuck on. When you invite rms, you get... well, rms.

    @Weng said:

    I do not eat breakfast. Please do not ask me any questions aboutwhat I will do breakfast. Please just do not bring it up.

    Jeesh, then just don't eat it if given. Problem solved. You can even donate those sausages to a kid in Africa if you so please. Or to FSF.

    @Weng said:

    I do NOT use browsers, I use the SSH protocol. If the networkrequires a proxy for SSH, I probably can't use it at all.

    What, not implemented yet?

    @Weng said:

    If you buy bus or train tickets for me, do not give my name! BigBrother has no right to know where I travel, or where you travel, orwhere anyone travels.

    Why don't you protect the dates and locations on your speeches this way, then. Everyone will be better off.



  • Speaking of RMS...



  • Richard M. Stallman, the FSF's president, said in a statement, "Getting
    rid of the signature checking is an important step. While it doesn't
    give us free code for the firmware, it means that users will really have
    control of the firmware once we get free code for it."

    Lol. I bet there is exactly one person in the entire world who cares about how free the firmware is.


  • kills Dumbledore

    Reminded me of this article on trying to run a fully open source Android experience, quickly modified when they realised that there are no OS drivers.

    Spoiler alert: it's a horrible experience



  • Before we begin, we have a few slight notes. FOSS stands for "free and
    open source software," and when we say "free" we don't mean free of
    cost, but free of restrictions. It's software that we can do whatever we
    want to, including copy, modify, and redistribute.

    Based on the article, that last sentence should be "Software that can do whatever you want, except for useful things."



  • If you want useful features, you're free to put them in yourself.



  • @mott555 said:

    I bet there is exactly one person in the entire world who cares about how free the firmware is.

    And I bet you just quoted him.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    Just don't ask him to breakfast.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @boomzilla said:

    Just don't ask him to breakfast.

    He can supply his own if his feet are warm enough. 😧 😷



  • Requesting a Do not want button.




  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @mott555 said:

    Lol. I bet there is exactly one person in the entire world who cares about how free the firmware is.

    Nah, not unless RMS is also running the not-Kickstarter.

    I clicked through that link and was amused that they charge you $25 to NOT get an optical drive. :wtf:


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    Is it wrong the stenotype here looks like someone with no woodshop skills put it together? I assume real ones have the keys laid out symmetrically. (Yes, I know, I know, it's a prototype. I hope the final version looks nicer.)


  • Fake News

    @FrostCat said:

    Nah, not unless RMS is also running the not-Kickstarter.

    I clicked through that link and was amused that they charge you $25 to NOT get an optical drive. :wtf:

    Must be a very expensive cover plate...



  • When I hear "free software", I think of MIT/BSD/Apache licensed software or software that doesn't cost money. I don't think of GPL software because that gives you less freedom than the other open source licenses would if you took the least free combination of them.



  • @ben_lubar said:

    When I hear "free software", I think of MIT/BSD/Apache licensed software or software that doesn't cost money. I don't think of GPL software

    Which is ironic*, given that the Free Software Foundation is responsible for the GPL, and those other licenses are more in line with the Open Source Initiative.

    (*) Like raaaaaa-ain, on your wedding day.


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    @tar said:

    Like raaaaaa-ain, on your wedding day.

    Rain on your wedding day is a bit ironic: it's supposed to be lucky, but the immediate consequence is everyone being wet and miserable.



  • @Yamikuronue said:

    Rain on your wedding day is a bit ironic: it's supposed to be lucky, but the immediate consequence is everyone being wet and miserable.

    OK, for bonus points: is this an example of verbal irony, dramatic irony or situational irony?

    Filed under: Um-ber-rella?


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