On Mon, May 10, 1999 at 09:37:07AM -0400, Collins M. Ben wrote: > On Mon, May 10, 1999 at 09:22:18AM -0400, Nils Lohner wrote: > > I have a question along the same lines, but in a different area. I'm > > pretty > > sure situations like this have come up before, but I don't know how they > > were handled. This is just from a discussion I had with someone. > > > > Can you take GPL'ed code and use it with a closed source program? i.e. > > take the GPL'ed program do_everything and someone wants to write a library > > for it that's do_one_more_thing but keep the library closed, is that OK? > > If > > they want to distribute and sell that, they distribute the source code to > > the GPL part (with modifications), and the binary (executable), right? I > > would assume it is, but modifications etc. to the original GPL code must be > > made public. Am I missing something here, or is that about the extent of > > it? Or is that illegal under the GPL and the entire source code must be > > made public because its used with some GPL'ed code? > > I suggest going to ftp.be.com and checking out the /pub/gnu directory. > They have done exactly this with their boot loader. It uses some parts of > the Linux kernel (those parts are released in source), and some parts are > proprietary (thos parts are only in .o object format). So you can > conceivably rebuild the boot loader with the source and objects provided. >
I think NeXT tried to do this and ended up releasing the full source to their Objective C compiler. -- Brian Ristuccia [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]