On 26/01/2014 13:28, Stefan Schreiber wrote:
..
I am/was aware that Tetrafile is published under GPL license.
But it depends maybe also how Tetrafile is included into the program?
(Cos Dalvik-VM/Java and Android development tools are Apache license.)
Not really. They declare themselves that the Apache license is
compatible with the GPL. Not all licences are.
Cynics call the GPL a "polluting licence" as it requires all the code,
including that from elsewhere, to be under either the GPL or a
compatible one - at least, one that is not more restrictive than the GPL
itself. So, for example, as I understand it, GPL code can be freely
combined with code that is fully public domain (free and without any
restrictions at all, including closed commercial use etc; one example is
the Synthesis Toolkit - STK, and any amount of code under the BSD
licence, which is essentially a standard disclaimer of responsibility).
So one thing you cannot do is mix GPL and closed source and publish only
the GPL parts. The point of the GPL is not simply to licence individual
source files, it is more to ensure any user can build their own modified
version of the application (which must then also be published under the
same terms).
..
See above. If you argument above is correct, things get quite difficult,
because typical Linux toolkit licenses are GPL. (So and according to the
argument above, you can't "separate" your code into GPLed and "other
license"/closed sections. Even if you try hard to do so.)
Nope, indeed you can't. There is some flexibility regarding libraries
(which could be under the LGPL; but under the strict proviso that the
user can relink with a different version of the LGPL library. Some of
that depends in the LGPL library being dynamically linked, so the user
can simply relink the binary with it. On the iPhone no dynamic libraries
are allowed, so everything has to be statically linked, which means in
turn that even if it is an LGPL library, everything must be made
available. If Tetrafile is GPL, it cannot be treated as LGPL, and all
the sources of any application using it needs to be available under that
licence.
Copyright holders of GPLed software can of course offer alternative
non-free licences if they choosee to. The classic example is FFTW, which
is free under the GPL, but is also licensed commercially (e.g. for
Matlab). I don't think that licence is particularly cheap though!
Richard Dobson
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