From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,565d6a6c6ff7cb37 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-05-01 18:27:11 PST Path: newsfeed.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news.mel.connect.com.au!news.syd.connect.com.au!nsw.nnrp.telstra.net!dnews.tpgi.com.au!tpg.com.au Message-ID: <3AEF6234.62F13316@tpg.com.au> From: Frank Ranner X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.76 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.2.14-5.0smp i686) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: GPL and Plug-INs and XML\Ada References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 203.29.145.158 X-Original-Trace: 2 May 2001 11:55:37 +1000, 203.29.145.158 Date: Wed, 02 May 2001 11:26:12 +1000 NNTP-Posting-Host: 203.12.160.33 X-Complaints-To: abuse@telstra.net X-Trace: nsw.nnrp.telstra.net 988766830 203.12.160.33 (Wed, 02 May 2001 11:27:10 EST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 02 May 2001 11:27:10 EST Organization: Customer of Telstra Big Pond Direct Xref: newsfeed.google.com comp.lang.ada:7074 Date: 2001-05-02T11:26:12+10:00 List-Id: David Botton wrote: > > If a person wrote an executable that had a plug-in architecture, would it be > possible then to include GPL'd plug-ins with out the application becoming > GPL'd? > The best bet would be to make the plug-ins LGPL, which explicitly allows dynamic linking from a non-Free application. Otherwise, if you are the author of both the non-Free app and the GPL plug-in you can do whatever you want. Now, if XML/Ada is GPLd and not written by you, you cannot link it the way you suggest, ie as a dll/so. You can link it the way Gimp does it's plugins, ie as a sub-executable that is forked and piped to. This is obviously allowed, otherwise you couldn't even pipe the output from a proprietary program into any gnu utility. > For example, If I wrote an application that had a closed lic. and it allowed > features to be plugged-in. One such group of features was for file "import". > So, I throw together a GPL'd plug-in that included XML\Ada and dropped that > dll in the dir and it is picked up at run time by the closed lic. > application. > > This would be different than: > > I write an XML COM object that uses XML\Ada and now my XML COM object is of > course GPL'd, but closed lic. programs (say in VB or Ada) could now use my > XML COM object to access XML. > > I could see where this case would be problematic (although I question that > also), but the previous cases seems to be no problem. Would including a > GPL'd COM / Corba object virus to my app and make it GPL'd? > The whole situation of linking has become much more complicated since the early days where you had pipe, static link, or dynamic link. Now there is RPC, DCE, Corba, Java Beans, SOAP, Sockets and who knows what other means of communication between modules. For those modules to start comparing licences would appear absurd. Nevertheless, Richard Stallman is at work on GPL version 3 which will attempt to address the issue of Free/non-Free links. Disclaimer, I am not a lawyer; my opinion is based only on reading many discussions on the same subject by many other non-lawyers. Regards, Frank Ranner