MacOSX licensing issues (was Re: Samba into kernel on )

[Michael Sweet]

The DJ wrote:
>>>This is a "special exception" and is not really allowed by the other parts
>>>of the GPL. You couldn't distribute (use/compile?) samba for Solaris
>>>without this exception because the libc would be mapped into the memory
>>>space and added to the program.
>>>
>>>The GPL regards the program + the linked libs as one "work".
>>
> 
> This last line made me think. Apple is using an adapted version of samba in
> their MacosX Server. They have released the code, but it appears this code
> is linked to an internal private framework (libary). Therefore the code is
> actually useless.

Except on that platform, which includes the framework as part of the
standard distribution that everyone gets, so it is covered by the
exception for such things...

> Are they required to GPL these frameworks aswell? If so, then
 > this would be great for the mac platform. Then we can finally get
 > that NetInfo authentication into samba in a nice and transparent way.

AFAIK, all of the netinfo stuff is part of Darwin, so if that's all
you are looking for the source is already there...

-- 
______________________________________________________________________
Michael Sweet, Easy Software Products                  mike at easysw.com
Printing Software for UNIX                       http://www.easysw.com