Lpc2000

Sorry folk I did not want to start a huge thing. I've spent a lot of time 
trying to understand GPL and what it means, as well as having released large 
bodies of code under GPL and just wanted to make people aware.

There have been huge wars fought on what GPL does and does not mean. There are 
some imprecise grey areas, particularly the static vs dynamic linking thing.

The FAQ is interesting, but it is not legally binding because it is not part 
of the actual GPL (which forms the legal part of the license), though it 
might be legally binding on FSF-owned code because it is a public statement 
of their interpretation. Things are further muddied by various GPL variants 
(eg. the Linux licence) which are based on GPL, have certain degrees of GPL 
compatability, but are no longer GPL because they are modified.

Under copyright law, only the copyright owner can sue for infringement, so 
talk to the copyright holder.

IMHO, the best way to handle GPL code is as follows:
1) If you can, stay in the undisputed zone. Stay away from the grey areas.
2) If you must go in the grey-zone (eg. dynamic linking) then talk to the 
original author/copyright holder. Get their interpretation. For instance a 
company I work with publicly state that they will not pursue dynamically 
linked usage as infringement, only statically linked usage.
3) State your case to the copyright holder and perhaps ask them to relicense 
the code under LGPL. LGPL allows you to use the code with any linking model, 
but you must contribute back fixes/changes to that code. Often people are 
open to relicensing and I have successfully had people relicence their code 
as LGPL before.
4) If nothing else succeeds then ask the copyright holder for an alternative 
license. Quite a few bodies of code are released under GPL + alternative 
licencing (perhaps for a fee) to allow use of the code in non-GPL situations.




On Friday 18 November 2005 09:30, Adam Goode wrote:
> On Thu, 2005-11-17 at 14:55 -0500, Tom Walsh wrote:
> > Tom Walsh wrote:
> > >No, read the license discussions on other websites.  If you statically
> > >link proprietary code to GPL code, then you must release source, if you
> > >dynamically link at runtime, then you do not have to distribute source
> > >of your application.  However, you must distribute the object files of
> > >the proprietary application.
> >
> > Correction on my part: LGPL static linking requires object modules to be
> > available from the proprietary app. Not GPL, in either case where you
> > dynamically link at runtime, you can protect your proprietary source.
> > Static linking is where the problems can arise.
>
> Actually, according to the FSF, you cannot use GPL code with non-GPL
> code even while dynamically linking.
>
> http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLInProprietarySystem
> http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#LinkingWithGPL
>
>
> An exception seems to be if you are using the a GPL library where you
> call into it in a plugin-style form of use.
>
> http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#NFUseGPLPlugins