Re: About GPL and proprietary software

Ron Johnson wrote:
> On Sun, 2003-08-31 at 14:57, Michael Meskes wrote:
> > On Sun, Aug 31, 2003 at 02:26:14PM -0500, Ron Johnson wrote:
> > > IANAL, but according to my understanding
> > > (1) proprietary s/w that dynamically links to "GPL" shared libraries
> > > has not broken the GPL.
> >
> > Sure? My understanding is that it does break GPL. That's why there's an
> > LGPL.
>
> Well, there's this:
> http://www.fsf.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#LinkingWithGPL
> and this:
> http://www.fsf.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#LinkingOverControlledInterface
> http://lists.gnupg.org/pipermail/gnupg-devel/2000-April/010043.html
>
> Linus thinks that dynamic linking is ok, RMS doesn't, but gives
> an example boilerplate that says how dynamic linking can be ok
> w/ the GPL. It's definitely a grey area.

Right, dynamic linking is a case where RMS would like the GPL to spread
the the closed-source binary, but I don't think he can legally do that.

We do have that issue with our linking in of libreadline. We may adopt
libedit someday for that very reason.

I researched this a little recently for Joe Conway.

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