This one time, at band camp, Thomas Bushnell BSG said: > Stephen Gran <sgran@debian.org> writes: > >> The fact that this is transitive linking means that it is perfectly > >> legal to distribute gnucash *source*. > > > > ENOPARSE, sorry. I can't imagine how it _could_ affect the source, > > since the source doesn't link to anything - it's just a build system and > > source code. > > You cannot distribute GPL'd source which has been modified to link to > a GPL-incompatible library when the only way the source would be > useful is if it is, in fact, linked to that library. Ah, I see the confusion (or maybe have some of my own). I am not talking about a GPL application that has been modified to use libssl. I am talking about a GPL application that uses a library, and that library could or could not link to libssl - the higher level application does not itself care or notice. I am not talking about changing the GPL application to directly use the GPL incompatible library. Maybe that applies to gnucash, but I'm trying to understand the more general case. > > I thought that I had read somewhere that the standard advice for making > > a non-free application talk to a GPL library was through a 'shim' > > library, so that the symbols aren't loaded together in a non-free/GPL > > incompatible application. > > Except, they *are* loaded together. > > Making "shim" libraries does not change the licensing rules at all, > which for the GPL, apply to the complete program. So then how is it that the NVidia drivers and so forth aren't illegal? This is precisely how many non-free or GPL incompatible applications communicate with GPL'ed ones. -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- | ,''`. Stephen Gran | | : :' : sgran@debian.org | | `. `' Debian user, admin, and developer | | `- http://www.debian.org | -----------------------------------------------------------------
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