Tom Tobin wrote:
IANAL either,
Ditto!
but my understanding is that judges take a very dim view of attempts like this to evade the requirements of a license.
I can't see how any judge could possibly come to that conclusion in this case. Studying the terms of the GPL and the BSD3 a lawyer would come to the conclusion that the terms of the GPL are narrower than the terms of the BSD3 but that independently developed code under the BSD3 license can be linked to GPL code as long as the terms of the GPL are followed. For instance, there are many BSD licensed drivers in the GPL licensed Linux kernel.
If a piece of software is built on another piece of software, it doesn't matter if you're looking at source code or a binary.
The GPL makes this distinction. The GPL says if you distribute a binary from GPL sources you must release the sources as well. It does not however say that if you release sources you must also release binaries.
I can write the SFLC and pose a hypothetical situation that captures the gist of what we're talking about, and post the response here, if anyone is interested.
I suggest that you put together a question, post it here for comments and when there is some form of concensus pass the question on the the SFLC. Erik -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Erik de Castro Lopo http://www.mega-nerd.com/