[ale] Topic for discussion

[Jason Day]

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