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libc is LGPL. The "problem" you're highlighting here is EXACTLY opposite what the entire open source movement was designed to prevent. It couldn't be less of an

by tacos 11y ago

libc is LGPL. The "problem" you're highlighting here is EXACTLY opposite what the entire open source movement was designed to prevent. It couldn't be less of an issue.

atgreen 11y ago
I'm not talking about libc. I'm talking about the kernel system call interfaces. They are defined by the kernel, not libc.
- 1_player 11y ago
  IANAL but the kernel _code_ is GPL. Nothing forbids you to implement from scratch some functionality with a different license. As long as you don't copy and paste GPL code. A system call is a function entry point. The code executed when those functions are called is GPL licensed, and Microsoft wrote that from scratch.
  - atgreen 11y ago
    What I'm pointing out is the absurdity of the current state of law. It doesn't matter if Microsoft wrote all of the code from scratch, because according to them the definitions of the interfaces alone -- not code and not header files -- fall under copyright law.
    - tacos 11y ago
      Oracle's position is that their interfaces were Copyright (C) Oracle and to use them you had to abide by the license from Oracle. The whole point of open source licenses is to make it explicitly clear what you're allowed to do with the (yes, still copyrighted) material. They too provide strict terms and require you to honor the license.
  - bluejekyll 11y ago
    So what defines a derived work? If you implement from scratch, but in order to implement must look at the existing implementation in order to get it correct, then it's possible (probable?) that the new implementation is directly derived from the original implementation. It's not like Linux has a published license free spec. Unless they reverse engineered the system calls (possible but omg I think that would have been hard), then I'd be willing to bet that this could be easily considered derived work from the GPL.
    - atgreen 11y ago
      Well, that haven't been getting it correct, so they've got that going for them :) https://github.com/kernelslacker/trinity/pull/9 https://github.com/kernelslacker/trinity/pull/9
- tacos 11y ago
  Those are effectively "header-only" and clearly documented as GPL. This is the basis of the entire movement!

by tacos 11y ago

libc is LGPL. The "problem" you're highlighting here is EXACTLY opposite what the entire open source movement was designed to prevent. It couldn't be less of an issue.

atgreen 11y ago

I'm not talking about libc. I'm talking about the kernel system call interfaces. They are defined by the kernel, not libc.

1_player 11y ago
IANAL but the kernel _code_ is GPL. Nothing forbids you to implement from scratch some functionality with a different license. As long as you don't copy and paste GPL code. A system call is a function entry point. The code executed when those functions are called is GPL licensed, and Microsoft wrote that from scratch.
- atgreen 11y ago
  What I'm pointing out is the absurdity of the current state of law. It doesn't matter if Microsoft wrote all of the code from scratch, because according to them the definitions of the interfaces alone -- not code and not header files -- fall under copyright law.
  - tacos 11y ago
    Oracle's position is that their interfaces were Copyright (C) Oracle and to use them you had to abide by the license from Oracle. The whole point of open source licenses is to make it explicitly clear what you're allowed to do with the (yes, still copyrighted) material. They too provide strict terms and require you to honor the license.
- bluejekyll 11y ago
  So what defines a derived work? If you implement from scratch, but in order to implement must look at the existing implementation in order to get it correct, then it's possible (probable?) that the new implementation is directly derived from the original implementation. It's not like Linux has a published license free spec. Unless they reverse engineered the system calls (possible but omg I think that would have been hard), then I'd be willing to bet that this could be easily considered derived work from the GPL.
  - atgreen 11y ago
    Well, that haven't been getting it correct, so they've got that going for them :) https://github.com/kernelslacker/trinity/pull/9 https://github.com/kernelslacker/trinity/pull/9
tacos 11y ago
Those are effectively "header-only" and clearly documented as GPL. This is the basis of the entire movement!