Re: Forking and relicensing issues (different)
On Mon, May 10, 1999 at 09:22:18AM -0400, Nils Lohner wrote:
> I have a question along the same lines, but in a different area. I'm pretty
> sure situations like this have come up before, but I don't know how they
> were handled. This is just from a discussion I had with someone.
>
> Can you take GPL'ed code and use it with a closed source program? i.e.
> take the GPL'ed program do_everything and someone wants to write a library
> for it that's do_one_more_thing but keep the library closed, is that OK? If
> they want to distribute and sell that, they distribute the source code to
> the GPL part (with modifications), and the binary (executable), right? I
> would assume it is, but modifications etc. to the original GPL code must be
> made public. Am I missing something here, or is that about the extent of
> it? Or is that illegal under the GPL and the entire source code must be
> made public because its used with some GPL'ed code?
I suggest going to ftp.be.com and checking out the /pub/gnu directory.
They have done exactly this with their boot loader. It uses some parts of
the Linux kernel (those parts are released in source), and some parts are
proprietary (thos parts are only in .o object format). So you can
conceivably rebuild the boot loader with the source and objects provided.
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