[Uml-devel] GPL question

[Jonathan Riddell]

On Fri, 16 May 2003, Mathias Meyer wrote:

> On Friday 16 May 2003 11:20 Sebastian Stein wrote:
> > If a company decides to implement some Umbrello plugins, could they do
> > this without releasing the source code? I think this would be a great
> > benefit, but I'm not sure if the GPL allows this.
> >
> > So don't get me wrong I don't know any company at the moment going to
> > do this, but it is just interesting for me.
> >
> I came over that issue while working on my dissertation, and it's a
> question of interpretation I think. You might want to check the GPL FAQ:
> http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLAndPlugins
> Check this and the following two following paragraphs. Seems like plug-ins
> for a GPL'd program have to be GPL.

Since it would be dynamically linked to our GPL'd library it would be a
derived work and would have to be licenced under the GNU GPL if it was
distributed.  This is a good thing and the reason for using a copyleft
licence.

Jonathan Riddell