On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 3:49 PM, Kevin Noonan <[email protected]> wrote:

>
>
> GPL goes a step farther than LGPL. It's "viral": any code even linked
> to GPL code is coerced into a GPL license.


Just to clarify this.

If you have GPL code and you use a non-GPL library with it that is fine.
The non-GPL library license does not need to be changed.

However, if you have GPL library code that you link with non-GPL code, that
is not fine, your non-GPL code needs to be distributed with a license
compatible with the GPL.

It is for this reason that the LGPL is generally used for libraries (L
stands for 'lesser' or 'library').   This license makes it explicit that you
can link the code with other code with no restrictions.    However, if you
modify the library code and distributed binaries with your changes, then you
need to make your library modifications available.

One final thing, I don't believe the 'linking' thing has ever been tested in
a court.   In particular, 'linking' for a language like python is a bit of a
grey area.

John

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