On Fri, 17 Jan 2003, Joe Walker wrote: > My understanding is that all the GPL obliges you to do is release the > code under GPL. It does not stop you releasing it under the GPL AND > another MIT/BSD style license (so long as there is no ad. clause conflict) > Many projects like Mozilla and MySQL (IIRC) are released under 2 licences.
If you make use of another's work (e.g. linking a library) that is covered by the GPL, then you must release that code under the GPL and only under the GPL. If you select a piece of work licensed under multiple licenses, you need to choose one and abide by it. So, it is not acceptable to write a Sword front-end that links to the Sword library and license it under any license other than the GPL. Front-ends are derivatives of Sword and therefore must abide by its license. (This is that viral thing everyone keeps talking about.... See section 6 of the GPL.) > I don't understand how there can be a problem for GPL code to link *TO* > non-GPL code. The GPL uses the word "derived" and not "linked" and the > standard copyright definition of "derived works" is a very one way process. > So I don't understand people that claim you can't have a GPL Java > program because it has to link to non-GPL code. It sounds like Squeak > might be the same. GPL code cannot be linked to and cannot itself link to non-GPL code with the exception of system libraries. From section 3 of the GPL: "The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable. However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable." --Chris _______________________________________________ sword-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.crosswire.org/mailman/listinfo/sword-devel
