Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body

[Thomas Charron]

On Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 9:02 PM, Akiba<chris at freaklabs.org> wrote:
> The issue is that the GPL requires that software must be provided free of
> licensing fees as mentioned in clause 2-c of the GPL v2:
>     * c) You must cause the whole of the work to be licensed at no charge to
> all third parties under the terms of this License.

  You can license the work, without licensing the IP the work
implements.  This clause says, if I change your code, the entire work
*I* made is released together under the license as well.

> I’m a member of the Zigbee Alliance, but I can’t expect my users to be. So
> the membership requirement would constitute a restriction placed on the
> software, since it uses Zigbee’s IP. As far as we can see, this is a
> violation of (at least) the spirit of the GPL. Regarding software using the
> Zigbee protocol to be allowed to use the GPL, we’re still trying to get a
> definite answer on this. However, at best, it looks like it’s ambiguous.

  It really looks like it depends on if your library is certified.
One could easily argue that if your stack is certified under Linux,
then end developers are actually end users of your library.

  I've also, as a note, sent them an email.  I've recently been
working on a proposal for a medical device, which would be running
Linux, and Zigbee is on their list of future requirements.  It would
be absolutely ludicrous if I had to limit my use of licensed products,
becaouse I couldn't interact natively with Zigbee from Linux.

-- 
-- Thomas