[Discuss] OSS licenses (was Home NAS redux)

[blu at nedharvey.com (Edward Ned Harvey (blu))]

Should the FSF feel compelled to go sue GitHub?  And should they be entitled to any settlement they extort out of GitHub?

GitHub sells a virtual appliance, which is a single executable binary file, compiled from a bunch of GPL based software including the Linux kernel and git, and also includes closed-source proprietary code.  Not just the GitHub proprietary closed source code itself - but any and all non-GPL packages distributed via Ubuntu, which happened to be included into the package selections GH used when building the VM.

If we're going to say "that should be excluded from the limits of GPL 'derived works,'" on the grounds that it's a whole machine unto itself - guess what - all java code, and .Net and mono should also be excluded from the limits of GPL, because they always run in a virtual machine.  Now there's a gray area that needs to be addressed in defining what a virtual machine is...