On Wed, May 07, 2003 at 09:39:25PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
> On Wed, May 07, 2003 at 01:12:09PM -0400, Anthony DeRobertis wrote:
> > On Wednesday, May 7, 2003, at 01:50 AM, Branden Robinson wrote:
> >
> > >Or are you wanting to restrict the problem domain to cases where an
> > >interface innovated in a GPLed library hasn't been cloned yet?
> >
> > Given:
> > 1) Library GPLLib is under the GPL
> > 2) Perl module Iface provides an interface to various implementations
> > of similar features, and the user selects which implementation to
> > use
> > 3) Perl modules PM uses GPLLib to implement Iface
> > 4) Perl program P is under a GPL-incompatible license
> >
> > Question:
> > Is is permissible for P to use PM through Iface?
>
> I would say yes, and I think that 2) is the critical issue.
Edmund GRIMLEY EVANS raised a good point. GPL clause 0 says "The act of
running the Program is not restricted". Your question should be
rephrased as:
Question:
Does the GPL permit people to distribute P with GPLLib?
The answer probably depends on the circumstances, but distributing
alternative implementations of Iface with P, not just the GPLLib
implementation of Iface, makes the answer an almost certain yes.
--
G. Branden Robinson | If you're handsome, it's flirting.
Debian GNU/Linux | If you're a troll, it's sexual
branden@debian.org | harassment.
http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | -- George Carlin
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