It's not so clear...

It's not so clear...

Posted Feb 20, 2009 15:24 UTC (Fri) by khim (guest, #9252)
In reply to: Bruce Perens: How Many Open Source Licenses Do You Need? (IT Management) by i3839
Parent article: Bruce Perens: How Many Open Source Licenses Do You Need? (IT Management)

As far as I can tell using a lib is not enough to be derived work, as you merely follow an interface, and hence copyright won't disallow things like that.

Actually it might - it depends on the interface. But what GPL does prevent is distribution of GPLed library and proprietary program as single package. The whole package is clearly derived work of GPLed library (it includes such library, after all) and so GPL applies. You can try to circumvent this by separate distribution of GPLed library and your program - but court may very well decide that the sole purpose of such a distribution was GPL circumvention.

Thus basically the only sane uncovered possibility are "nVidia drivers": when GPLed part is distributed by one entity and proprietary part - by another, unrelated, one. And this is not particularry interesting case for 99% libraries out there...

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