Distributing non-free software intended to be linked against GPL'd software

pjm — Thu, 11 Dec 2003 08:25:49 +0000

Re readline, I'd guess that the issue is that one may not distribute a binary of a program linked against GNU readline: I'd guess that this combination is not to be considered "mere aggregation", so the combination may not be distributed. I'd guess that use of the readline interface would not make the program source code a derived product of readline: I'd guess that this falls under "scenes a faire" as explained in page 4 of Dan Ravicher's paper (item b in particular). [That description is specific to a jurisdiction, though presumably many jurisdictions would be similar.]

If these guesses are correct, then it would suggest that one may distribute source code for a non-free program intended to be linked a GPL'd library libfoo if one doesn't also distribute libfoo. Distributing non-free object files is a bit trickier (e.g. one may need to avoid including inline code from libfoo), but looks doable.

IANAL. I made these guesses just now, I haven't had much time to find any problems with them.

LWN: Comments on "Re: Linux GPL and binary module exception clause?"

Distributing non-free software intended to be linked against GPL'd software