Re: GPL v LGPL for libraries

[Martin Mitchell <martin@debian.org>]

<aqy6633@acf5.nyu.edu>(Alex Yukhimets) writes:

> Now, to get around this, I clreate a tiny GPL'd program as follows:
> 
> getstem.c:
> 
...
> And in my main program I just have to use
> 
> char* getstem="/usr/lib/myapp/getstem";
> char* w="driving";
> char* buffer=(char*)malloc(strlen(getstem)+strlen(w)+10);
> sprintf(buffer,"%s %s",getstem,w);
> FILE *sf=popen(buffer);
> fgets(buffer,strlen(buffer),sf);
> fclose(sf);
> char* s=buffer;
> 
> 
> Now everything is legal. But is there anything substantially different 
> in these two cases? Except for implementation details, of course.

Yes, there is. It is both inconvenient to write wrappers for each GPL
function you wish to use, and inefficient as it is a lot of overhead to
call one routine. The difference is encouragement that you should release
the source to your program, and license it under the GPL.

	Martin.