On Sep 06 20:52, Alex Bennée wrote: > > Markus Armbruster <arm...@redhat.com> writes: > > Please advise why TCG plugins don't undermine the GPL. Any proposal to > > add a plugin interface needs to do that. > > I'm not sure what we can say about this apart from "ask your lawyer". > I'm certainly not proposing we add any sort of language about what > should and shouldn't be allowed to use the plugin interface. I find it > hard to see how anyone could argue code written to interface with the > plugin API couldn't be considered a derived work.
I am not a lawyer, but I would not have expected software merely using a well-defined API to be considered a derivative work of the software defining it. Unless, of course, it is a derivative work of another plugin using the same interface in a way that is not necessitated by the structure of the API. What's your reasoning for why it would be a derivative work? Is your belief that the plugin API is complex enough that anything using it has to be a derivative work, or something else? That said, I'm not sure I understand in what way adding a plugin interface would undermine the GPL, so maybe I'm missing the point. -Aaron
