Uwe Grauer wrote: > Paul McNett wrote: >> Ed Leafe wrote: >>> On Jan 23, 2007, at 3:30 PM, Paul McNett wrote: >>> >>>> I meant: why can't Nate's serial debugging tool be part of DaboDemo? >>>> There's no reason for Dabo or DaboDemo to distribute serial. >>> Depends on your legal interpretations. If you write code that links >>> to a GPL library, there are many schools of thought (read: MySQL) >>> that considers that sufficient to require all your code to be GPL'd. >> What do you mean by "link"? I haven't heard anyone say that merely >> having code that is meant to be linked to a GPL program at runtime is >> enough to GPL your own code. If that were true, MySQLdb would be GPL'd >> because it "links" to MySQL, and hence Dabo would be GPL'd because it >> links to MySQLdb. >> >> > > Dabo isn't using the MySQLdb connector to make it work. > If MySQLdb would be used for the preferences instead of sqlite, > dabo had to be GPL.
Only if Dabo distributed MySQLdb. Merely requiring it doesn't link it to Dabo. > Redistribution of GPL connectors would also violate the GPL. Redistribution of GPL software is allowed and encouraged, and expressly protected; certainly it isn't a violation of the GPL to redistribute. It is only when you link it to your software where you risk making your software GPL as well. The question is the term "link". If we had made Dabo's preferences save to MySQL, *and* we had rolled up MySQLdb into Dabo and redistributed it, *then* we would be GPL. But if we merely made MySQLdb a requirement and left it up to our users to install the dependencies, this would not be the case. -- pkm ~ http://paulmcnett.com _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/dabo-dev
