Re: GNU License, Again

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   > The original is no longer free, since it depends on a non-free work.
   > The resulting work, a deriviate, is no longer free.  And for the last
   > time, the GPL cannot make anything free, only the copyright holder
   > can.

   How is the free code suddenly dependent on the non free work?
   The non-free work is what's dependent on the free code, not
   the other way around, in my scenario.

It is a _deriviate_, that is how it is dependant.  It doesn't matter
what depends on what.

Imaging for a second that you have a work, to which you add some
non-free code.  A user can no longer change the work as a whole, since
parts of it are not free.  The GPL sees that an evil part cannot do
such things.  It simply does not make anything free, it just sees that
the a free program stays free.


You could equally argue here that the free program does not depend on
the non-free parts, since the non-free parts only add functionality,
but that is not relevant, since the _WHOLE_ work is what matters.

   Saying the "GPL makes things free" is a quick way of saying that
   "the GPL requires you to make things free if you want to use other
   free things (specifically, GPLed free things) in a certain
   way". It's just a lot shorter, and I am surprised you want such
   excruciating, exacting detail. Most people could get the drift of
   what I'm saying.

It is the difference between pi being 3.14 and 4.  One is a good
aproximation, the other is completely bogus.