license conflicts and making ports distributable

[Joshua Root]

On 2013-4-22 15:05 , Ryan Schmidt wrote:
> 
> On Apr 21, 2013, at 23:51, Leo Singer wrote:
> 
>> latex2html is used while generating the htcondor manpages. What is it in the GPL-2 license that conflicts with the Apache license in regard to creating binary distributables?
> 
> Probably nothing. If latex2html installed GPL-licensed libraries, and non-GPL-licensed htcondor linked with those libraries, then it would be a problem. But latex2html doesn't install libraries. So the line "installs_libs no" should be added to the latex2html port so that this is not considered a license conflict.

To clarify, GPL-2 most certainly does conflict with all existing
versions of the Apache license. This is simply because the Apache
licenses impose a few requirements that the GPL does not, and the GPL
does not allow any additional restrictions. See sections 6 and 7 in
GPL-2. (Apache-2 and GPL-3 are compatible, OTOH.)

However just running the latex2html executable does not create a
derivative work, as Ryan alluded to above, so the license conflict is
not an issue in this case.

> I'm actually surprised by this requirement, since latex2html already says "supported_archs noarch", and surely a port that does not install any architecture-specific files cannot install a library that can be linked to. I thought "supported_archs noarch" implied "installs_libs no". But it does not seem to.

Interpreted code can be a library too.

- Josh