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Judicial Order in MySQL AB vs. Nusphere Suit
bkuhn writes: "Judge Saris has ruled on the preliminary injunction motion. The Court recognizes in today's order that MySQL AB "seems to have the better argument" on the GNU GPL matter. The Court fully recognized the need for expert testimony at trial about the GNU GPL and the technical facts at hand, particularly as to why static linking of software components into a single, unified, compiled binary forms a derivative work of the original components."
It is clear that something is derivative if it "contains" the functionality of something else, but is it Just that the licensing agreement of a minor, or even insignificant, part of the derivative work should dominate the remaining portions?
It's not that the license of a small portion of the work is dominating the work. Rather, it is that the only right one has in redistributing that small portion of code, is if he agrees to all the terms of the license. In this case, the license explicitly states that the rest of the product must also carry the GPL license. It is not that the GPL causes the rest of the product to be under the GPL, but that one has no legal right to be distributing that subcomponent unless the rest of the product is under the GPL.
Many people mistakenly refer to the GPL as viral. That gives the false impression that the GPL 'forces' other products to adopt the license. That is not true though. It's sort of like a software company saying that in order to use a certain library commerically, the library user must pay a certain royality. In this circumstance, that royality is the assurance that the code using the library is also under the GPL.
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));