Busybox under closed-source-license avaiable?

[Rob Landley]

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...)

Rob