Hi,
> I want to use librtlsdr (as plugin) in BSD 2-clause licensed project > (I don;t want to announce it yet, till it will be alpha-quality!). > according to GPL FAQ I could not dynamically link GPL2 code into > not-GPL code > (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLStaticVsDynamic). > > So, I ask direct permission from authors to use librtlsdr in BSD > 2-clause licensed open-source project. Disclaimer: IANAL, and what follows should not be considered legal advice or acknowledgment. But here's my current view on it : The text you reference doesn't say you can't, it just says that the compiled result will be GPL (which is covered by the fact that the BSD license allows to sublicense). So what this essentially means is that you can do it (preferably as an option, so you can build without it), but the actually binaries will be GPL and not BSD and therefore subject to GPL restrictions concerning their distribution. So imagine someone does a proprietary derivative of your projects or links proprietary code to it, they can only redistribute the version of your project compiled _without_ support for rtlsdr (or remove it from the codebase all together). This is used by several projects where you have to manually enable some dependencies during the ./configure stage, so that by default, they only build using BSD stuff, but you can enable some optional modules that use GPL code (but then you must be aware that the resulting binary is GPL and not BSD anymore). (This is of course all assuming good faith. Anything that's specifically designed for the sole purpose to circumvent the GPL by wrappers using other license is differently covered by "copyright circumvention" laws) Cheers, Sylvain
