On Wed, Aug 07, 2002 at 13:24:31 +0200, Grzegorz Prokopski wrote: > > Now - I've had a bit of a further read, and from what I've read, it's > > probably ok for me to build and to distribute my stuff, since I don't > > distribute readline as well, but apparently the debate seems to be if > > there is a conflict for debian to ship both readline and firebird > > together. > I am afraid you're violating GPL this way. It doesn't matter if you > distribute this lib or not. The fact is that you use lib's headers and use > lib itself (while compiling and then linking the program).
The keyword here is _use_. The GPL doesn't place restrictions on use, only on redistribution. I'm fairly certain that one of the texts at http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/ goes into this in detail. > You could say so if you could compile FireBird having NO libreadline on > disk (for ex. with some stub lib only and own headers). But you can't > (ATM). There is only a problem if you redistribute the resulting binary. (Of course, a program that cannot be distributed in binary form is not particularly useful from Debian's perspective) > Even then (if you could) - the user using such FireBird would be violating > GPL, as he would effectively link GPL-incompatible program to GPLed > library (he won't be able and/or will not want to use empty, stub lib). Linking GPL-incompatibly licensed code against GPLed code is not a violation of the GPL. Distributing the result is. Ray -- "The problem with the global village is all the global village idiots." Paul Ginsparg
