LoadRunner and the GPL license: MI a potential victim to Stallmanism?
Submitted by Suresh Nageswaran on Mon, 21/03/2005 - 05:30.
Mercury LoadRunner
[textile]
Saturday afternoon, I spent listening to the monthly SPIN lecture here at Pune. The speaker was *Prakash Khot*, a senior architect from *CA* (Hyderabad). The topic was the *Eclipse TPTP* (Hyades) project and open source in general.
One of the more interesting things Prakash mentioned was that CA consciously does not use GNU/products covered by the GPL copyleft license, preferring instead, their home-baked TOSL. What then are the implications for Mercury LoadRunner, which is based on the GNU *LCC*, GNU *Regex* engine and the GNU *GCPP*?
The reason proferred was that the GPL is _"dangerous"_ for product companies. This is because the GPL stipulates that using GPL-licensed components as a base for your product means your product now is to be distributed under the GPL!
I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Surely, there must be some mistake. A little background research later, I came across Richard Stallman's Jihad on copyrights and Dr. Nikolai Bezroukov's paper on this.
The LR *bin* folder containing *Ver 2* of the *GPL* has this to say:
"2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:
a) You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any change.
b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.
c) If the modified program normally reads commands interactively when run, you must cause it, when started running for such interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and a notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you provide a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program under these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this License. (Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but does not normally print such an announcement, your work based on the Program is not required to print an announcement.)
These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based
on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it."
Essentially, and my reading could be wrong, but LR could be interpreted as a *derivative* work! From what I know, the GPL has not been tested in court so far - but it could be under a huge question mark on the future of LR.
[/textile]
Saturday afternoon, I spent listening to the monthly SPIN lecture here at Pune. The speaker was *Prakash Khot*, a senior architect from *CA* (Hyderabad). The topic was the *Eclipse TPTP* (Hyades) project and open source in general.
One of the more interesting things Prakash mentioned was that CA consciously does not use GNU/products covered by the GPL copyleft license, preferring instead, their home-baked TOSL. What then are the implications for Mercury LoadRunner, which is based on the GNU *LCC*, GNU *Regex* engine and the GNU *GCPP*?
The reason proferred was that the GPL is _"dangerous"_ for product companies. This is because the GPL stipulates that using GPL-licensed components as a base for your product means your product now is to be distributed under the GPL!
I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Surely, there must be some mistake. A little background research later, I came across Richard Stallman's Jihad on copyrights and Dr. Nikolai Bezroukov's paper on this.
The LR *bin* folder containing *Ver 2* of the *GPL* has this to say:
"2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:
a) You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any change.
b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.
c) If the modified program normally reads commands interactively when run, you must cause it, when started running for such interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and a notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you provide a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program under these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this License. (Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but does not normally print such an announcement, your work based on the Program is not required to print an announcement.)
These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based
on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it."
Essentially, and my reading could be wrong, but LR could be interpreted as a *derivative* work! From what I know, the GPL has not been tested in court so far - but it could be under a huge question mark on the future of LR.
[/textile]