[Pkg-bluetooth-maintainers] Re: libbtctl: two questions regarding use of LGPL and GPL in source files

[Josselin Mouette]

Le jeudi 28 septembre 2006 à 05:01 +0200, Øystein Gisnås a écrit :
> I've gone through license considerations of RFP-marked package
> libbtctl lately, and have questions about two concerns:
> 
> * 7 source files are have LGPL license in their headers, but link
> against bluez-libs, which is licensed under the GPL. One such file
> ishttp://cvs.gnome.org/viewcvs/libbtctl/src/btctlimpl.c?rev=1.20&view=markup.
> The overall license of libbtctl is GPL. Shouldn't the license in each
> of the 7 source files be changed to GPL since they link against a
> GPL'ed library?

You can do that, but there is no need to do it, as there isn't any
problem with mixing GPL and LGPL code.

> * Some source files are LGPL and some are GPL. The end-result library
> is GPL. My conclusion is that this is DFSG compatible. Am I right?

The end-result is a mix of GPL and LGPL, and practically speaking it has
the effects of the GPL. This is of course perfectly free.

Cheers,
-- 
 .''`.           Josselin Mouette        /\./\
: :' :           josselin.mouette at ens-lyon.org
`. `'                        joss at debian.org
   `-  Debian GNU/Linux -- The power of freedom