On Thu, Apr 26, 2007 at 10:57:51AM +0200, Elias Pschernig wrote: > Yes, might very well technically be against the GPL, but then, every > program compiled with MSVC would be against the GPL (since they all
Right! That's why nobody uses such compilers for Open Source stuff ... > need that DLL.. at least when compiled in the way the python DLL is > compiled by Python's Windows devs). > > So two problems: > 1. Does Microsoft allow re-distribution of the DLL for someone not owning > MSVC? Probably, but I'm not sure. > 2. Can MSVC-compiled programs which require that DLL still be considered GPL? No! I'm not 100% sure but at least to 99.5%. That's why there exists also the LGPL which allows this. Debian has a statement (http://www.debian.org/News/1998/19981008) which seems to match this case and explains the situation. It concludes with: "you may not distribute the Program at all." > To me personally, it still seems just a technicality - if e.g. MSVC > would be able to embed that .dll inside the .exe, there would be no > problem, Wrong! A user of a GPL'ed program has the right to access the complete source code of the binary also for binary stuff included by the compiler. > but because it comes with a .dll required to run the programs > it outputs, it gets a problem. Actually, I wonder now why wesnoth runs > without that .dll (it's also compiled with MSVC..) - just the python > devs using stupid settings? Is it really not possible to compile Python the old style way by doing ./configure; make; make install (or do they use a different build system)? I know for sure that autotools work in Windows even if I cannot test it since I do not own such a system since Win3.1 and the license is just not appropriate for a normal user such as me. Jens _______________________________________________ Wesnoth-dev mailing list [email protected] https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/wesnoth-dev
