On 08/11/12 15:28, Shlomi Fish wrote: > Here is the third draft - I have integrated Liam's suggestions and gave more > context for our dilemma. > > Regards, > > Shlomi Fish > > > Dear Sir or Madam, > > I am writing you this letter on behalf of Mageia ( https://www.mageia.org/en/ > ), which is a community-developed, operating system, based on the > GNU/Linux system and with a free-and-open-source (FOSS) core. We would like to > ask whether (and how) we can distribute pre-built packages of a GPLed program > (in our case, the video editor cinelerra) after it was linked to a library > with some proprietary and non-GPLed code (in our case, faac). > > The longer story is that there has been some demand for including faac > ( http://sourceforge.net/projects/faac/ - the Freeware Advance Audio Coder), > which is both non-free in part and patent encumbered, in our distribution, > and to prepare versions of the appropriate packages for which it is an > optional dependency. These packages, such as cinelerra ( > http://cinelerra.org/ - a video editor), are licenced under > the GPL, which restricts which code its distributed binaries may be legally > linked to. > > So our question is: assuming we package faac as a package, can we still > provide pre-made and binary packages of GPLed programs that use it? > Furthermore, would this require receiving an explicit permission from the > copyright owner of the program under the GPL? > > We would appreciate any advice that you can give to us on the matter. > > Sincerely yours, > > — Shlomi Fish, on behalf of the Mageia development team. > >
Looks good to me Shlomi :) Claire
