First, I want to thank all that have contributed their insightful comments. Second, I want to apologize if I have started a contentious thread.
I did get an answer that was generally sufficient for my needs. Since we want to avoid even the appearance of subterfuge, we are going to avoid using libraries where we don't have a reasonable "non-viral" implementation that we can include. I have happily persuaded my colleagues that simply using dynamic linking to access the library, but not providing any reasonable implementation was folly at best. Your responses were instrumental in getting them to realize that. For example, in the case of readline, my colleague was only loking for the command-line recall capacities using "the arrow keys" and the application already has an implementation of command recall, so that will be joined with reference to the curses library which is under an acceptable license. To my mind this is a much better solution to the "viral license problem" than attempting to skirt the license in some technical way, which could be viewed as subterfuge. And corporate policy has already made clear that our company's lawyers also reject shim-code and other similar devices for skirting license requirements. We are also going to be careful with the "standard" libraries, we use and inform legal of those which exist on the platforms we target only under viral licenses so that the corporate lawyers can inquire as to whether our uses are acceptable. Now, I understand that avoiding using open source libraries because they have a viral license limits the quality of the resulting software. However, that is the corporate policy we work within and while we can try to change it (likely futile, since the clients want our corporation to have such a policy, but the water wears away a mountain one drop at-a-time), we must abide by it. I am further happy to note that corporate policy does not restrict us from developing open source software, just that we distribute any software developed in house under a non-viral open source license. Best regards to all, Thanks, -Chris -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
