Re: The ActiveState Platform and Perl 5.32

[stevieb]

Is the platform Open Source? If not, how do you manage the licenses of the various distributions where "we do all of the compilation and building on our side and give you the bits".

Not all licenses are the same. Curious as to how you manage to stay legal if you're building, say, for example a GPL distribution from the CPAN and only supplying the "bits".

[autarch]

The platform itself is not open source, but the bits you get out of it (for Perl 5.32) are under the same license as the thing that was compiled. For something like GPL code, unless we patch it, we can just point at the upstream source code if someone wants it. That said, we will soon offer direct access to source via an API we're currently working on. It will let you get all the upstream source for a given build easily.

[stevieb]

Thing is, if my understanding of GPL is correct (and it may not be as I use the Artistic license), if a GPL project is included in another project, everything must be Open Source. I don't believe you can compile and send over the bits of a GPL project without having the encompassing project being GPL as well.

At least that's how I understand the GPL in my limited knowledge.

Might be worth having your legal team look into this.

[chromatic]

That's not how copyleft works. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to compile GPL code with MSVC and distribute the binaries without making MSVC GPL as well.

[autarch]

I think you're conflating two meanings of the word "include" here. If you make a collection of software that includes some GPL and some non-GPL software, each individual piece retains its original license. The collection as a whole may have a license as well.

If, however, you take some GPL code and copy it into your program, or if you link/import GPL code, your program becomes GPL. But simply bundling some GPL code (compiled or not) with other code does not affect that other code's license.