After posting the previous post I read the other thread which also covered licencing issues. I want to make some things clear.
I think Chris made some statements which are wrong or at least too strong. A program which uses sword libraries doesn't have to be under GPL. It only must be under a GPL-compatible licence. You said sword uses a library which is under BSD. That works other way also. A program under BSD may use sword. "GPL-compatible" means that the original licence allows changing the licence to GPL. LGPL allows it explicitly, BSD allows almost any use and does not prohibit changing the licence. GPL uses some kind of trick. When a program and a library are separate (in binary form in e.g. a hard drive of an end user) they have their own licences. But when they are linked at run time, GPL has the viral effect and changes the other part's licence to GPL. Also when they are distributed in a same medium GPL has that effect. And what's more, any personal use is allowed. You are allowed to write code which uses GPL'ed library. You are allowed to compile and use it with that library. You are allowed to distribute your program's source code even if it is under non-GPL-compatible licence (in US this may be also about freedom of speech). Someone else is allowed to download your code, compile it and use the binaries with the GPL'ed library which he has obtained somewhere else. That all is personal use, except for distributing the source code, and GPL is not meant to deal with any personal use. Distributing the source is possible because of Section 2: "If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works". These are interpretations, not explicit wordings of GPL (except the last part). I have read these things somewhere and they represent some common interpretations. GPL is very problematic licence and it's legal status at least in some points is unclear. Remember also that it is legal to make an API comptatible library for any API (I don't know why, but I have never seen anyone question that). There are GPL'ed libraries with "proprietary" APIs and it would also be possible to make a proprietary library which has the same API that sword has. Would it be illegal to make a proprietary program using that proprietary library? No. Therefore distributing a proprietary program which uses sword API must also be legal. But it is illegal to distribute a proprietary program which uses some API with a GPL'ed library which has that API. The previous sentence is a common interpretation of GPL, see Section 2 of GPL. Therefore e.g. Linux distributions cannot have a GPL'ed library AND an Open Source program which uses that library but is under a non-GPL-compatible licence. So, if you want to make a program and distribute sword libraries with it, the program must be under a GPL-compatible licence. If you want to modify the sword library or incorporate some code from it to your own work, then the new program or library must be under GPL. And to make sure, GPL explicitly reads: "Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your rights to work written entirely by you". Even if it would state otherwise, the law is above licences and it is always legal to licence and relicence or triple- or quadruple-licence your own code as long as you have the copyright to it. _______________________________________________ sword-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.crosswire.org/mailman/listinfo/sword-devel
