[ale] Topic for discussion
Jason Day
jasonday at worldnet.att.net
Fri Oct 31 10:22:49 EST 2003
On Thu, Oct 30, 2003 at 08:23:09PM -0500, Christopher Fowler wrote:
> One good example would be in programs that allow plug-ins. If
> dlopen() was considered "linking" then one can not write a
> plug-in for GIMP unless it was under the GPL like Gimp. I'm
> not sure what license GIMP is under.
I stumbled into this exact situation a few years ago, when I wrote a
plugin for J-Pilot, which is GPL, and uses dlopen() to load plugins.
The problem I had was that my plugin was derived from MPL code, which is
incompatible with the GPL. I originally assumed that since I wasn't
bundling any of my code together with GPL code (ie, I only distributed
source code, and the end user had to have the source code to J-Pilot as
well to build my plugin) then the GPL didn't apply to my plugin.
The author of J-Pilot was ok with this, but he mentioned to me in a
private message that some people had complained to him that my plugin
was violating the GPL. He wasn't suggesting that I needed to do
anything, he just mentioned it in passing. This was a real concern for
me, though, because I had gone out of my way to try and be compliant
with the GPL. So I pored over both the GPL and the MPL to try and
determine if I was in fact violating either. Here is a link to a FAQ
that very clearly shows the FSF's opinion on this:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLAndPlugins
In the end, J-Pilot's author gave explicit permission for me to
distribute my plugin in both source and binary form.
Jason
--
Jason Day jasonday at
http://jasonday.home.att.net worldnet dot att dot net
"Of course I'm paranoid, everyone is trying to kill me."
-- Weyoun-6, Star Trek: Deep Space 9
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