Westley Martínez writes: > Is it legal to distribute GPL programs that use the Win32 API?
Yes. Their use of the Win32 API falls under the "essential system library" clause. The criterion for "essential" is that normal, basic use of the system would fail without the library. Windows won't boot without Win32 API support, so it satisfies that clause. OpenSSL is needed only by a minority of programs, and Python itself will run without it, so OpenSSL will not qualify for that exception. As Martin points out, that's not relevant to Python, since it can be built without and Python is not a GPL program. And as Antoine points out, it's not relevant to Python programs unless they actually call OpenSSL functions. In that case only, the program becomes a derivative of OpenSSL, and only with agreement of all owners of GPLed code in the program may the program be distributed. (Ie, if they all agree to the special exception for specific non-GPL libraries that Joao Bueno describes.) _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
