Legal status of using a GPL'd LD_PRELOADed with a non-GPL'd app ...

[Timshel Knoll <timshel@debian.org>]

[please CC all replies to me, I'm not on this list]
Hi,

I've posted an ITP[1] for libtrash, a library that uses LD_PRELOAD to
intercept application calls to unlink(), rename(), open(), fopen(),
freopen() and other system calls which may delete/truncate files, and
moves them to a "trash can" rather than deleting them. My question is
this: libtrash is licensed under the GPL, and the LD_PRELOAD is likely
to allow non-GPL'd (including non-free) binary code to use it. The
binary code is not actually "linked" with libtrash, however.

[1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=137108&repeatmerged=yes

Branden Robinson seems to think that the distribution of this is OK, but
suggested that I bring this discussion to the -legal forum. Any ideas on
this?

Cheers,

Timshel

-- 
   Timshel Knoll <timshel@pobox.com>  for Debian email: <timshel@debian.org>
      Debian GNU/Linux developer, see http://people.debian.org/~timshel/
                For GnuPG public key: finger timshel@debian.org