On Sat, Oct 30, 1999 at 11:40:16PM -0500, Chris Lawrence wrote: > I suspect a blanket prohibition on reference by non-GPL'ed software > would be incredibly dumb, even if it were permitted by copyright law. > It would forbid anything non-free from operating as a shell (and would > even prohibit KDE programs from launching GNU software). Not to > mention that it'd be impossible to launch GNU software on a non-GNU > system, or even boot a GNU system in the first place (as the boot > sector is referenced by a non-free BIOS or other boot rom).
It's amazing how often this is misunderstood. Use of a GPL program is not restricted, or even covered by the GPL. Only copies, modifications and distributions are. So, a blanko prohibition on reference would only affect the distribution (etc) of a derived work, not the use. Marcus -- `Rhubarb is no Egyptian god.' Debian http://www.debian.org Check Key server Marcus Brinkmann GNU http://www.gnu.org for public PGP Key [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP Key ID 36E7CD09 http://homepage.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/Marcus.Brinkmann/ [EMAIL PROTECTED]