Re: hypothitical nonfree question
On Wed, Jul 11, 2001 at 09:48:11AM +1000, Brian May wrote:
> Lets say I am writing a frontend (call it X), to a GPL package
> (eg. gnupg), and want to be a prick and disallow commercial use. This
> runs gnupg by forking and execing it and supplying STDIN while reading
> STDOUT.
>
> Does the GPL allow this?
Yes. This is specifically covered in the gpl faq
(http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl-faq.html). The relevant text is:
Q. If a program released under the GPL uses plug-ins, what are the
requirements for the licenses of a plug-in.
A. It depends on how the program invokes its plug-ins. If the program
uses fork and exec to invoke plug-ins, then the plug-ins are
separate programs, so the license for the main program makes no
requirements for them.
The situation isn't identical, but the basic idea is the same (fork and
exec == separate program, free of the restrictions of the GPL).
Joshua
--
Joshua Haberman <joshua@haberman.com>
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