Is the GPL actually viral across dynamic linking?

Posted Nov 19, 2024 22:21 UTC (Tue) by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
In reply to: Is the GPL actually viral across dynamic linking? by nix
Parent article: Two approaches to tightening restrictions on loadable modules

> You seem to think that "derivative work" and whether something is a derivative work of something else is defined by the license. It's not: that would be an easy get-out and would make copyright licenses useless. Licenses cannot decree such things.

Where did I say (or even imply) that? What is a derivative work is, as you say, a matter of (vague) law.

Go back to what I *did* say - that "dynamic linking can NOT be a GPL copyright violation, because the GPL *explicitly* permits it" (unless someone can come up with a scenario where the linking does not happen on the end user's machine - I can't!).

Distributing a program that abuses a GPL API can be a copyright violation, but that's not down to the end user, and that's not dynamic linking, and it's not a violation if the "abuser" does it on their own machine ...

Cheers,
Wol