@ 17/06/2004 14:12 : wrote Andrew Suffield :
> to use GPL"), the very last paragraph of [1]: > > QUOTE > > This General Public License does not permit incorporating your > program into proprietary programs. If your program is a subroutine > library, you may consider it more useful to permit linking > proprietary applications with the library. If this is what you > want to do, use the GNU Library General Public License instead of > this License. > > QUOTED That text is explicitly non-normative. *plonk*
No, I'm sorry. *If* it is non-normative, *then* you can link GPL libraries (Qt for instance) and proprietary programs at will. Definition of derivative work: result of the _transformation_ of original work. Linking, /per/ /se/, does not make a derivative work. Linking is not transformation. Aggregation is not transformation. Period.
Worse: aggregation is not transformation *because* the law (USC17, and BR copyright/software laws 9610/98,9609/98, and most probably all others, as per the Geneva convention) differentiates between aggregation (anthologies) and transformation (derivatives).
Now, if you read above as everybody does, including GPL authors FSF, RMS, Eben Moglen: GPL applies to the incorporation via linking of this library in your work, forbidding you to make a work that links with this library unless you treat and regard your work as a derivative work of the library (which it would not be at first). It's a clarification that shows an additional restriction on the redistribution of works.
-- br,M