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What does the GPL allow? (Announce)

posted by ecm Homepage E-mail, Düsseldorf, Germany, 30.05.2011, 16:08

> Instead of making funny little comments, please provide an example where
> GPL3 will be an obstacle to this code being used.
Shouldn't that be obvious? Or should the question rather be "Shouldn't you know what your license does and does not allow?"?

> The design of the code is such that there is no "library" - you directly
> compile all of the code and link it with your application.
Linking the code with the application makes the GPL apply to all code linked together therein.

It doesn't matter whether the libraries are dynamically linked (separate files at run-time), whether they are statically linked during linkage (separate static library/object files passed to linker), or whether they are already "linked" by being compiled at the same time (separate source code files but compiled to basically the same group of object files and treated like the application's source code).

The only exceptions for this are:
(a) GPL source code is allowed to be linked to non-GPL "system libraries" or some such, the exact definition can be found in the GPL's text, and
(b) source code that isn't actually licensed under the GPL, but under a modified GPL with additional linking exception. This modified GPL used to be called LGPL but I don't think it's formally called that with GPLv3.

If none of those exceptions apply then all of the application's source code must be provided under the GPL's terms. As you may have heard the GPL is incompatible with a number of other software licenses.

> The library is not a standalone component that gets built first,
> so there is no obstacle to using it.
Wrong.

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l

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