Re: framework

[Yavor Doganov]

David Chisnall wrote:
> And this is what I am talking about when I say that people should
> read and understand the GPL, and the relevant bits of international
> copyright law it depends upon, before using it...

Right...  My way of thinking is severely twisted around binary-based
distros.  I stand corrected.

> You may release a framework that depends on a GPL framework under,
> for example, an MIT license, however the combined work of your
> framework plus the GPL'd framework falls under the GPL.

(I assume you mean the X11 license -- MIT has many licenses, some of
them proprietary.)

Yes, you're right -- the only condition is the license to be
GPL-compatible.  But for all practical reasons, GPL is the only viable
option in such situations.  (That's why the Enlightenment folks asked
the GNU PDF developers to downgrade the license to LGPL, because they
have a fairly firm formal rule all components to be under a
non-copyleft license.)  Out of curiosity -- I was also wondering if
this is the same reason why you don't use libfaad in Melodie, but rely
on a library which is not widely available in distros due to software
patents concerns.

> If you are not distributing the GPL'd framework, you do not have to
> comply with the GPL, however anyone distributing your framework and
> the GPL'd framework (e.g. Linux distributions) will have to.

Yes, for example if Adun.app was under the Expat license, Debian [1]
will have to distribute it under GPL, because it links dynamically
with GSL.

[1] FWIW, Debian is not a "Linux" [sic] distribution.  There are ports
that do not use the Linux kernel -- GNU/kFreeBSD and GNU/Hurd, and
soon GNU/kOpenSolaris.