[Python-Dev] GPL'd python code vs Python2.6 linked against OpenSSL

[Joao S. O. Bueno]

On Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 2:41 AM, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen at xemacs.org> wrote:
> Joao S. O. Bueno writes:
>
>  > Any libraries commonly avaliable with a CPython instalation can be
>  > considered as "system libraries" for GPL purposes - and so
>  > this would fall in the "system library exception" as described by the FAQ:
>
> Note that your interpretation would allow Python to distribute
> arbitrarily licensed libraries and GPL programs to link with them.
> That is surely not the intent of the authors of the GPL, and in the
> past, the FSF has explicitly restricted the interpretation of "system
> library".  Specifically, in
>
>  > "Major Component", in this context, means a major essential component
>  > (kernel, window system, and so on) of the specific operating system
>  > (if any) on which the executable work runs, or a compiler used to
>  > produce the work, or an object code interpreter used to run it.
>
> the word "essential" would refer to running the compiler or the
> operating system or interpreter, not to a component essential to
> running the program but in general optional for using the system.


So tellme how the Python interpreter and the libraries linked to it are not
"essential" to a program made in Python?

I did not refer to distributing Python itself with GPL librareis
linked into it -
you had put it this way.

The original question is whether a Python program can be GPLed, and
the answer is:
it can.

You can see Antonie Pitrou's first answer to question:
" A Python program is not a derivative of the Python interpreter any more
than a C program is a derivative of gcc (or any other compiler)."

The fact is that Python programs need more of environment t run than a
C program,
since besides the system libraries they run oer the Python interpreter and any
libraries it links too: all these are intrinsic in order to the proram to run.
Otherwise no one could ever have a GPLed program written in notoriously
privative language or environments such as Visualbasic, Microsfot's .net,
or even Java using Oracle's Java environment.


> Perhaps this has changed with the advent of GPL v3, but the FSF used
> this interpretation to block the consideration of (old-Qt-licensed) Qt
> as a system library on GNU/Linux systems, even where distributed by
> vendors such as Red Hat.  OTOH, for some reason Motif on Sun and HP
> systems, and Windows and Mac GUIs were considered essential.
>

They where then contradicting their own current FAQs on the GPL.
Anyway, the original author has
always the right to exempt some library his program links to of complying with
the GPL.

  js
 -><-