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

[The DJ]

on 28-03-2002 14:14, Simo Sorce at simo.sorce at xsec.it wrote:

> On Thu, 2002-03-28 at 02:08, 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.
>> 
>> 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.
> 
> Depends, is this library part of the OS? Or is it use just for samba?
> In the first case the GPL does not require them to open it.
> If they made the library just to make samba work instead then I think it
> cannot be considered an OS component and so it must be made GPL.

I have only seen it in samba, but it might be possible they use it in other
parts of OSXServer as well. Although, why would they, the rest can already
natively request this info. I'll post to the Darwin dev list about this.
Thank you all.

>> On the other hand, I see Apple ripping the whole of Samba out of the OS for
>> that reason. They don't like to opensource non Darwin code.
>> 
> It's their choice to do so (I would consider it a rather stupid move).

They have the tendency to be a bit stubborn, like a little child that is
robbed of its favorite toy ;-)

DJ
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Derk-Jan 'The DJ' Hartman
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