On Wednesday, Dec 11 2002 at 09:58:00 -0600, Russell Valentine wrote: > Well the kernel modules stuff is a exception, I believe those act more > like a LGPL license. See the top of COPYING in the linux kernel source.
I'm not sure what you're referring to - that text talks about user programs and not kernel modules. OK, I tried to find out a bit more... http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6152 cites Linus: 'On the legal side, there is no specific exception for binary-only modules. "They're borderline legal. There's nothing in the license that says you're excused from the GPL", Torvalds said.' http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLAndPlugins: [...] If the program dynamically links plug-ins, and they make function calls to each other and share data structures, we believe they form a single program, so plug-ins must be treated as extensions to the main program. This means they must be released under the GPL or a GPL-compatible free software license, and that the terms of the GPL must be followed when those plug-ins are distributed. If the program dynamically links plug-ins, but the communication between them is limited to invoking the `main' function of the plug-in with some options and waiting for it to return, that is a borderline case. So, it depends of how things work between avifile and the codec. I guess Zdenek could explain that :) I think that intention might matter here a bit, too. The whole point of avifile is to give *ix users access to several closed-source codecs. It would be hard to explain why these codecs would be infected by the GPL in this process. So why should another codec which happens to work with avifile be infected? Hanno _______________________________________________ Avifile mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://prak.org/mailman/listinfo/avifile
