On 26/02/24 22:04, Eric Altendorf wrote:
On Mon, Feb 26, 2024 at 12:42 PM Daniele Nicolodi <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:On 26/02/24 18:11, Eric Altendorf wrote: > Is beancount code used in fava or smart_importer? > > derivatives should indeed be GPL but if you simply write code that > interfaces with the core beancount code, I think you can use any license > you want (though I am not a lawyer) This is incorrect. It is possible to link to GPL licensed code only from code released under a compatible license. I might need a reference with more detail to understand what you mean.
There are countless explanations of this principle online, starting with official GNU position on the matter: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#LinkingWithGPL
For completeness of information, it is worth noting that this principle is sometimes disputed. This limitation was clearly meant to exist when the GPL license was written, however, AFAIK it has never been tested in court. The Beancount mailing list is not the place where this matter should be discussed.
If I interpret what you said naively, it would seem, for example, that any code that is written to make calls to the Linux kernel (ie anything that runs on linux) would have to be GPL....
There is no linking going on between the Linux kernel and user space. There is the syscal interface, which is covered by the so-called "syscal exception" annotation, see for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel#cite_note-12 and https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/LICENSES/exceptions/Linux-syscall-note
Most programs, however, interface with the kernel via the C standard library, which on most Linux systems is the GNU libc, or glibc, which is indeed released under the terms of the LGPL, not the GPL. The LGPL allows linking to code released under non-compatible licenses.
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