Bernard Devlin wrote (see his whole message at the end of this email):
You're either extremely knowledgeable about the GPL, or I think you
have misunderstood the GPL.
The first is certainly not true, so the second is more than likely. I got my
(hopefully wrong!) information from the site of Artifex, who maintain and sell
the commercial version of Ghostscript and its derivatives. They say:
If your application (including its source code) is not licensed to the public
under the GNU GPL, you are not authorized to ship GPL Ghostscript or GPL
MuPDF with your application under the terms of the GNU GPL if any one of the
following is true:
your application contains a copy of some or all of GPL Ghostscript or MuPDF;
your application is derived from, is based on, or constitutes a revision of
some or all of GPL Ghostscript or MuPDF;
your application includes one or more functions that use some or all of GPL
Ghostscript or MuPDF.
These criteria apply to your application as a whole. Even if only one section
of your application satisfies one of these criteria, you are not authorized
to ship GPL Ghostscript or GPL MuPDF with your application unless your
application, including all of its source code, is licensed to the public
under the GNU GPL.
If your application (including its source code) is NOT licensed to the public
under the GNU GPL and you intend to distribute Ghostscript or MuPDF to a
third party for use with and usable by your application, you MUST first
obtain a commercial license from Artifex.
I perhaps naively believed all this without further research. I have now read
the GPL - it is quite tough to follow, but I tried to test it on what I
actually want to do, which is to distribute Ghostscript or an existing
derivative of it unaltered along with my own application (written in LiveCode,
a proprietary software system) and for sale as a product under 'normal'
commercial terms.
In the Preamble, the GPL states:
For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether
gratis or for a fee, you must pass on to the recipients the same
freedoms that you received. You must make sure that they, too, receive
or can get the source code. And you must show them these terms so they
know their rights.
The applicable part of the GPL referring to compiled and complete versions of
programs (such as GhostScript in binary form, which is what I intend to use) is
Section 6. It does allow use of the compiled code, provided that the user is
offered access to the source code (this is 6b). So Bernard, I think you are
right and that Artifex is wrong - which means the use of 'free' software (using
the term as GNU uses it) is OK.
Thanks Bernard for that very interesting insight.
Graham
PS I will return to the technical argument (which seems to be getting rather
tetchy) about the use of IM, GhostScript etc. soon. I thought it better to keep
the licensing discussion separate.
On Sat, 1 Oct 2011 15:40:57 +0100, Bernard Devlin bdrun...@gmail.com wrote:
You're either extremely knowledgeable about the GPL, or I think you
have misunderstood the GPL.
The GPL v2 does not mean you cannot charge for re-distribution of GPL
code (there are companies who charge for the re-distribution of linux
on dvds). If your code is bound to GPL libraries and you distribute
that combined artifact then you might have issues. If your code calls
out to compiled programs (using shell() then there is no issue). A
very strict interpretation is that if your code is bound to libraries,
then you are bound to provide your souce should someone demand it, or
cease using the libraries in that case. There are those who dispute
that even binding to libraries does not fall within the GPL v2.
GPL v3 was brought in to stop so many companies exploiting GPL on
the server-side (i.e. where there is no re-distribution of code).
Unless the code you want to use to provide such a web service is
licensed under GPL v3, I cannot see what the issue would be. I know
of very few projects using GPL v3.
And not all open source licenses have the same copyleft implications
as the GPL. If you are distributing RunRev's ssl library with your
apps, you are re-distributing open source code (only this time it is
the Apache license + SSL license). It is always possible that
companies negotiate a separate non-GPL license for GPL code they wish
to incorporate and re-distribute.
Anyway, I hope the first suggestion works for you so that you do not
even need to consider these issues.
Bernard
On Sat, Oct 1, 2011 at 1:22 PM, Graham Samuel livf...@mac.com wrote:
since mine is a commercial product, there would presumably be
licensing issues for a non-GNU developer.
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