[ -hackers -> -chat ]
On Tue 2000-12-26 (12:44), Marco van de Voort wrote:
> > I ran into people at NASA who use Python because (beside being a good
> > language) it isn't GPL.
>
> Pure paranoia. You don't have to share the code that is written IN
> Python. Only modifications TO python (if it were GPL)
>
> > For legal and security reason they cannot
> > share changes to code they make, so anything GPL is unusable.
>
> > So are programs that run on Linux required to be open source? I need
> > to know.
>
> You may only shared link to GPL'ed packages, and the rest is up to
> you.
There is plenty of rhetoric on this, but the general view is that system
libraries that provide functionality that is available in other non-GPL
libraries (that is, libc, and friends) may be linked with, even if the
specific library someone links it to is GPL (GNU libc is LGPL anyway,
unless that's changed recently, but this theory allows proprietary
programs to support free software systems where the libc is GPL [1].
However, deciding to link to other GPL libraries whose interfaces are
specific to that library, and for which there are no competing non-GPL
libraries (readline, for example), would mean having to make your code
GPL.
(This is perhaps why "shared linking" is deemed to be allowed by some.
However, if this were so, I could take any arbitrary GPL program, wrap
most of it up in a library, and shared link to it for most of the work,
add some calls into it in my program, to create my own derived program
which need not be GPL'd.)
The Library General Public License used to be the more tolerant library
license, but its use is now slightly discouraged, and it has been
renamed the "Lesser" General Public License. The "Why Not LGPL" page
suggests to LGPL only libraries that have equivalents in the non-GPL
world, as making them GPL doesn't "give free software (sic) any
advantage", and to GPL libraries that have no equivalents (giving
readline as an example) to make sure proprietary developers cannot use
it, unless they decide to use the GPL, or decide to simply write their
own version and create the wheel over and over.
This is what I perceive to be the general view, and should not be
considered legal counsel. ;)
1: I wonder about just providing an object archive to the langauge and
make the users link against their GPL libc if I was worried about
license problems on a "free software only" system.
Neil
--
Neil Blakey-Milner
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