[Uml-devel] GPL question

[Jonathan Riddell]

On Mon, 19 May 2003, Luis De la Parra Blum wrote:

> I think if a software company likes Umbrello so much and starts using it for
> "real work" ( ie, design the programs from which they make money ) and they
> come up with a nice plug in, the least they could do is to give that code
> back to the community.
> That's what would seem fair to me.. I mean, if they are getting the main thing
> for free, they should allow the rest of us to get their add on in the same
> maner.

> > 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
>
> I dont think you are right here, Jonathan.
> Like I said above, I think they *should* do it, and even though I'm by no
> means law-expert, I think they could get away with it.
> I think if their code is statically linked to ours, then it becomes GPLed, but
> as long as it's dynamically linked thay can close it.

It all depends on what is or is not a derived work.  It's never been
tested in any court so nobody really knows but it's generally accepted
that linking against dynamic libraries makes it a derived work.  Otherwise
anyone could use, say, Qt for developing proprietry software without
buying a licence from Trolltech.

> just take a look at the nvidia drivers. they are dlls ( modules ) and are
> closed -- nobody likes it that much, but everyone accepts it. I guess it's
> better to have a closed-source driver, than having shitty graphics under
> linux.

I've never looked at the nvidia drivers.  If they only link against X then
there's no legal problem since X isn't copyleft.  If they link aginst
Linux then there is a problem since Linux is GPL'd.  But it would take a
Linux developer to actually sue then for it to really matter.

Jonathan Riddell