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=-0.4 required=5.0 tests=AC_FROM_MANY_DOTS,BAYES_00 autolearn=no 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: 2001-05-02 13:57:44 PST Path: newsfeed.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!skynet.be!isdnet!psinet-france!psiuk-f4!psiuk-p4!uknet!psiuk-n!news.pace.co.uk!nh.pace.co.uk!not-for-mail From: "Marin David Condic" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: GPL and Plug-INs and XML\Ada Date: Wed, 2 May 2001 16:46:54 -0400 Organization: Posted on a server owned by Pace Micro Technology plc Message-ID: <9cpro1$p8a$1@nh.pace.co.uk> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: 136.170.200.133 X-Trace: nh.pace.co.uk 988836417 25866 136.170.200.133 (2 May 2001 20:46:57 GMT) X-Complaints-To: newsmaster@pace.co.uk NNTP-Posting-Date: 2 May 2001 20:46:57 GMT X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4522.1200 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4522.1200 Xref: newsfeed.google.com comp.lang.ada:7102 Date: 2001-05-02T20:46:57+00:00 List-Id: This would seem to be impossible to enforce. If its impossible to enforce, its a good bet that it won't stand up in front of a judge. If you had some sort of dynamic binding to something else that is not part of your .EXE - no matter what the specific mechanism is - it would seem that the license on the thing you bind to can't really impose something on your code. (If it could, don't you think Bill Gates would have claimed ownership of everything ever run on a Micro$oft OS?) If you make reference to someone else's book while writing your own book, does this violate the other guy's copyright? That is to say, if you don't have a translation of the library included in your .EXE and if you don't distribute (copy) the other guy's DLL onto your disk, you have not violated his copyright. So claims based on copyright don't seem to hold up - you don't really copy anything, right? (There may be other problems - is the API to his DLL some sort of trade secret? etc? Or could someone else "reverse engineer" it without violating any restrictions?) If the copyright owner extends the right to you to copy and distribute his DLL separately, then putting it on a separate disk - or on the same disk - seems to be nothing but a splitting of hairs that makes no difference. They remain separate products that function independently & can be distributed separately. Obviously, this gets significantly more complicated if you're talking about something that *isn't* dynamically linked, such as compiler libraries & runtime kernels - but that wasn't the original question. If I were the judge, I'd look at such a situation on the basis that the compiler is pretty well useless to a developer unless the developer can retain full ownership of the product of his labor. Compiler writers used to put all kinds of restrictions on their runtime code, but you don't see that anymore. Either a) it wouldn't hold up in court (the "That dog don't hunt!" principle of arbitrary judgement) or b) the American Free Enterprise System saw to it that such compiler vendors got spanked for doing it. It seems logical that calling a DLL couldn't impose an open source rule on my code. Otherwise, any software that ran on Linux would have to be open sourced because at the end of the day, Linux is really equivalent to a big, giant DLL. If making Posix calls on a Linux development platform could force open source on me, I bet there'd be a lot of developers in trouble right now. :-) Has there ever been a court challenge based on GPL'ed DLL's? MDC -- Marin David Condic Senior Software Engineer Pace Micro Technology Americas www.pacemicro.com Enabling the digital revolution e-Mail: marin.condic@pacemicro.com Web: http://www.mcondic.com/ "Stephen Leake" wrote in message news:uy9sfvdaf.fsf@gsfc.nasa.gov... > The key is the linking mechanism. I asked essentially the same > question on a Windows CVS mailing list; apparently the Free Software > Foundation position is that a "dll" (which stands for Dynamic Link > Library) is _linked_, which is the term used in the GPL. So GPL dlls > do "infect" the full app.