Re: Q: Combining proprietary code and GPL for in-house use
On Tue, Jun 19, 2001 at 07:14:14PM -0500, Clark Rawlins wrote:
> Suppose the author of a program publishes a program and the interface
> to a set of plug in libraries for that program that allows third parties
> to extend the program using dynamic linking. Lets say for the sake of
> argument that the program is distributed under the unmodified BSD license.
> (It is incomparable with the GPL). Then suppose someone else takes a library
> under the GPL and creates a wrapper library that conforms to the interface
> of the first program but licenses the wrapper under the GPL. Now the question
> is: is it legal to distribute both of these programs together as part of a
> software distribution?
Groan. The BSD (at least the new one without the advertisement clause)
are compatible licenses, a software distribution in the Debian sense
is a mere aggregation of works and always fine with any free software license,
and last but not least, it doesn't matter who invented an interface or
implemented it first. Copyright law is not concerned about that, and
the question if something is a derived work from something else has nothing
to do with the specific details of an abstract idea like an interface,
only with the fine details on its implementation, like if code was copied
or not.
Thanks,
Marcus
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