Hi all, I'm wondering what the general consensus is on the legitimacy of using GPL-ed code in a driver for a proprietary operating system, in my particular case to generate a file system driver for Windows CE.
I've had a good read of the GPL license and associated FAQs at www.gnu.org and trawled through various Usenet postings and it seems to me to be a bit of a grey area. Regardless of how others might view things it is pretty clear that the opinion of the FSF is that the act of linking to a GPL-ed program, regardless of whether that linking is static or dynamic, creates a derived work that must also fall under the GPL license (and if this not the intent of the copyright holder they should maybe be using the LGPL instead), however there is a clear exemption allowing a GPL-ed program to use libraries/ components that are a standard part of the operating system for which the program is designed without the OS components falling under the GPL. I'm wondering whether this exemption could be considered to work in the other direction, allowing a GPL-ed driver/module/plugin to be used by a proprietary OS. Thanks for your thoughts, Richard Lang. _______________________________________________ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss
