[DUG] Open source licences

Ben Taylor to_ben at yahoo.com
Wed Dec 7 14:04:51 NZDT 2005


> Provided you are calling to GPL software in a separate .dll you should be fine. 
> Where you bind it into your .exe you are extending the GPL work and so it would
> need to be GPL'd.
> 
> Am I wrong?

"maybe"

quoted from: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html

Can I release a non-free program that's designed to load a GPL-covered plug-in?
    It depends on how the program invokes its plug-ins. If the program uses fork and
exec to invoke plug-ins, then the plug-ins are separate programs, so the license of
the plug-in makes no requirements about the main program.

    If the program dynamically links plug-ins, and they make function calls to each
other and share data structures, we believe they form a single program, which must
be treated as an extension of both the main program and the plug-ins. In order to
use the GPL-covered plug-ins, the main program must be released under the GPL or a
GPL-compatible free software license, and that the terms of the GPL must be followed
when the main program is distributed for use with these plug-ins.

    If the program dynamically links plug-ins, but the communication between them is
limited to invoking the `main' function of the plug-in with some options and waiting
for it to return, that is a borderline case.


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