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That would be fine. The software is distributed to you separately, and so any "derived work" resulting from installing your GPL software on Windows is owned by

by dTal 6y ago

That would be fine. The software is distributed to you separately, and so any "derived work" resulting from installing your GPL software on Windows is owned by you anyway. What would arguably not be fine, under my interpretation, would be if Windows would not function without a GPL component, that's built-in to the OS and distributed on the install disks and updated through Windows Update. Even if it's a self-contained binary, and you can navigate to it in the filesystem. The standard is - would a reasonable person view the combination of GPL and non-GPL code as a single piece of software?

int_19h 6y ago
The more interesting case is when the software automatically downloads said binary. The even more interesting case is when there is more than one option for that binary, all with the same interface (but possibly different features), and only some of them are GPL. This was famously the hypothetical presented by the author of CLisp (which had a dynamic dependency on GNU Readline) to Stallman.
Wowfunhappy 6y ago
> would a reasonable person view the combination of GPL and non-GPL code as a single piece of software? I think reasonable people would disagree with each other. macOS used to come with iTunes preinstalled, but you could remove it by turning off SIP and running `sudo rm -rf /Applications/iTunes.app` in the Terminal. I always did so, because iTunes sucks, and the rest of the OS always continued to work fine. Is iTunes a part of macOS, or is iTunes a separate piece of software? Would it matter if you could remove iTunes through Finder, or without turning off SIP? Would it matter if iTunes wasn't included with macOS, but was automatically downloaded and installed a day later? Would it matter if iTunes was created by a third party, or if macOS couldn't output any audio without it? What about Google Play Services? DirectX? ZFS? I could certainly make a case for how I think each of these should be classified, but I don't think it's at all obvious.
- dTal 6y ago
  Yes, the boundaries are fuzzy; that's typical in law. The "reasonable person" language is not my invention, and it's assumed that somewhere along the line someone is going to have to fight in court over the particulars of ambiguous cases. The ambiguity is a strength - it forces compliance with the spirit of the wording, instead of risking litigation by trying to find a technical loophole. Software engineers consistently underestimate the degree to which law is not like coding.

by dTal 6y ago

int_19h 6y ago

The more interesting case is when the software automatically downloads said binary. The even more interesting case is when there is more than one option for that binary, all with the same interface (but possibly different features), and only some of them are GPL. This was famously the hypothetical presented by the author of CLisp (which had a dynamic dependency on GNU Readline) to Stallman.

Wowfunhappy 6y ago

> would a reasonable person view the combination of GPL and non-GPL code as a single piece of software? I think reasonable people would disagree with each other. macOS used to come with iTunes preinstalled, but you could remove it by turning off SIP and running `sudo rm -rf /Applications/iTunes.app` in the Terminal. I always did so, because iTunes sucks, and the rest of the OS always continued to work fine. Is iTunes a part of macOS, or is iTunes a separate piece of software? Would it matter if you could remove iTunes through Finder, or without turning off SIP? Would it matter if iTunes wasn't included with macOS, but was automatically downloaded and installed a day later? Would it matter if iTunes was created by a third party, or if macOS couldn't output any audio without it? What about Google Play Services? DirectX? ZFS? I could certainly make a case for how I think each of these should be classified, but I don't think it's at all obvious.

dTal 6y ago
Yes, the boundaries are fuzzy; that's typical in law. The "reasonable person" language is not my invention, and it's assumed that somewhere along the line someone is going to have to fight in court over the particulars of ambiguous cases. The ambiguity is a strength - it forces compliance with the spirit of the wording, instead of risking litigation by trying to find a technical loophole. Software engineers consistently underestimate the degree to which law is not like coding.