Busybox under closed-source-license avaiable?

[walter harms]

Rob Landley schrieb:
> On Sunday 12 October 2008 09:25:50 Roberto A. Foglietta wrote:
>> 2008/10/12 Denys Vlasenko <vda.linux at googlemail.com>:
>>> On Wednesday 08 October 2008 10:24:32 pm Lin Xbasu wrote:
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> Can you please tell me, whether it is possible to get a license for the
>>>> busybox to distribute it as object code / executable without beeing
>>>> forced to publish the source code as GPL does?
>>> I think busybox had many contributors over the years, and it's virtually
>>> impossible to contact them all and convince every single one of them
>>> to agree on this.
>>>
>>> You have to comply with GPL v2. Which is not difficult and costs nothing.
>>  In case you want deliver your specific proprietary command line
>> executable and you would like to keep its size very small then you can
>> compile it linking against busybox library.
> 
> Where'd you get that from?  Libbb has never promised a stable documented API 
> to act as a barrier limiting derived work status.
> 
> Your interpretation of events also goes against the fact that trolltech has 
> been saying for years that you can't dynamically link against their GPL-only 
> qt libraries, which are dynamic libraries by the way...
> 
>> Remember that GPL allow 
>> only dynamic linking, static should enforce GPL redistributions terms
>> and make your application bigger.
> 
> Where does the text of the GPL mention dynamic vs static linking?  I haven't 
> read it this week, but I'm sure I'd have remembered.  (I sent three fedex 
> envelopes to the SFLC over the past two weeks about busybox license 
> enforcement.  I suspect if it was as clear cut as you say they would have 
> mentioned something by now...)
> 

I think the case is closed 8at least in Germany). The courts decided that
it does not matter what  static/dynamic/dlopen. this is long term practice.
this is the reason why LGPL is introduced and libreadline is GPL.