Re: Plugins, libraries, licenses and Debian

[Walter Landry <wlandry@ucsd.edu>]

mru@kth.se (Måns Rullgård) wrote:
> 
> I am working on a piece of free software that makes extensive use of
> plugins, i.e. shared objects dynamically loaded at runtime.  Many of
> these plugins are linked with third-party libraries.  The licenses of
> those libraries vary, including at least GPL, LGPL and X11.  Now I'm
> trying to work out what choices of license for my program would allow
> distribution of binaries, and also what would be DFSG-free.  I'd
> appreciate some comments about these matters.

If you choose any of those licenses (GPL, LGPL, X11), you should be
fine.  There is no problem using those plugins with your program.  So
the question comes down to which one you prefer for your own work.

However, if there are other plugins distributed with GPL-incompatible
licenses (e.g. something that links to OpenSSL), then it gets more
complicated.

Regards,
Walter Landry
wlandry@ucsd.edu