OK, I know this will probably have come up over and over, but I couldn't
find anything in the archives.
We produce a commercial mail server (not GPLed) which has a defined DLL
interface to allow people to create plugins to integrate with virus
scanners (I'll call that an 'AV plugin DLL'). It's not specifically
designed for ClamAV, but for any 'reasonable' virus scanner, and that
interface has been . Also, you don't need a virus scanner at all to use
our software, although, obviously without one, messages won't be scanned
for viruses - so it adds optional functionality. This AV plugin DLL
functionality has been in our software for about 8 years, so it's not
something we've added specifically to try to get around GPL.
If we made our software link directly with libclamav, then, as far as I
can see we'd need to GPL our software, which isn't desirable
What if another person made an AV plugin DLL to link our software with
libclamav? I presume that by doing so, their DLL would have to be
released under the GPL, but I also presume that wouldn't force us to GPL
our software even though our software is now linking with (their) GPL
software.
What if WE made an AV plugin DLL to link our software with libclamav?
(At the moment we're thinking of making an AV plugin DLL which execs
clamdscan, which, AFAICS is totally 'safe' for our licensing, but it
would be much more efficient (on Windows) to have it link directly with
libclamav - we don't mind releasing the source to the AV plugin DLL - it
could be a useful example for our more technical customers)
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