Les Mikesell <lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx> writes: > The point is that no copyrighted material covered by the GPL material is > being distributed. The end user has his own copy of the GPL'd material > and the right to use that copy any way he wants. Yet the FSF claims the > right to prohibit distribution of this other code containing no parts > under their license by someone with no reason to have ever agreed to > their license. But if your program fails to work if you remove the GPL-covered code, there is no question that it depends on it. And if it depends on GPL-covered code, it has to be licensed under the GPL as well. Simple as that. If, on the other hand, the GPL-covered code can be readily swapped for a compatible library that is covered by another license, the issue is less clear, but that might just be me. But then, GNU libraries that have commercial equivalents are mostly (always?) licensed under the LGPL instead, so it is usually not a problem. In the GNU project, libraries that are unique, i.e. have no equivalent competitors, are licensed under the GPL to promote development of GPL software that uses the features provided by those libraries. Libraries that do have equivalents, such as the C library, are licensed under the LGPL, since the FSF understands that there is no reason to disallow e.g. proprietary applications to link with libraries that have competing implementations with equivalent functionality. This would require a system to carry several implementations that do essentially the same thing, which is a waste of disk space. That is why those libraries are licensed under the LGPL. Regards Ingemar
