RedHat SRPMS
Federico Sacerdoti
fds at sdsc.edu
Tue Oct 7 17:34:50 UTC 2003
On Friday, October 3, 2003, at 01:33 PM, Xose Vazquez Perez wrote:
> Red Hat, EL or Linux, bring source code under GPL or BSD or Xfree or
> others OSI licenses.
> But binary code, ISO images, Red Hat logos, and the *Red Hat(TM)* do
> not are under
> those licenses, instead ->
> http://www.redhat.com/licenses/rhel_us_2-1.html?country=United+States&
>
Binary code is a "translation" of source. The compiler acts as a
translator between high and low level languages: C or similar on one
side, and the machine instruction set on the other. By article 0 of the
GPL, this translation equates to a modification of the work and is
covered by the GPL license.
I do not know if this fact has any precedence in court, but
translations of works have been covered under copyright law for
centuries.
I do not see how binary code can jump to a different copyright
structure if it was made from GPL source.
Federico
Rocks Cluster Group, San Diego Supercomputing Center, CA
More information about the fedora-list
mailing list