On Aug 04, Ralf Treinen wrote: > Is it OK to distribute a script, which is > - licencend under GPL. > - intended to be executed by a non-free interpreter. [..] > When I sent my ITP on debian-devel today, Moshe Zadka claimed that > even distributing maria-viz would be illegal. > > http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2002/debian-devel-200208/msg00188.html > > Can please someone advise whether this is really the case?
I do not believe the Free Software Foundation interprets the GPL in this manner. After all, some GNU software includes code that is only intended to work with non-free compilers and make implementations. I believe there is GPL'ed software in contrib that requires certain (non-free) Java class libraries as well. The issue in the case of this program is perhaps even more narrowly cast, since there is a free alternative to (at least some of) graphviz (http://www.chaosreigns.com/code/springgraph/), and it is entirely possible to develop a free alternative for the particular interpreter in question. Chris -- Chris Lawrence <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - http://www.lordsutch.com/chris/ Instructor and Ph.D. Candidate, Political Science, Univ. of Mississippi 208 Deupree Hall - 662-915-5765
pgpLeAT7n8agw.pgp
Description: PGP signature