[Mono-devel-list] ByteFX development

[Jonathan Pryor]

On Mon, 2004-09-20 at 18:48, Michael L Torrie wrote:
> On Mon, 2004-09-20 at 15:29 -0700, Michael J. Ryan wrote:
> > Okay, but if my code only accesses ByteFx's dll, and doesn't embed
> > any code from it, I am safe (commercially) from it, correct?
> 
> If the DLL is LGPL, then yes you can link a non-GPL, non-LGPL program
> against it.
> 
> If the DLL is GPL, then you can't link a non-GPL program against a GPL'd
> dll.

Just to clarify this, the term "link" really isn't a useful term.

The *real* question is this: is the GPL'd code in your address space? 
Is it directly executable by your process?  This question handles
dynamic linking, Java, .NET, Python, and anything else.  "Link" can be
ambiguous amidst all this.

If the GPL'd code is in your address space, either (1) your code *must*
be GPL, or (2) the GPL'd code must have a license extension permitting
it to be used in your program.  An example of (2) would be a GPL'd
PhotoShop plug-in.  Obviously PhotoShop won't be GPL'd, so if you want
to be able to distribute such a plug-in you'd need to permit linking
your code against PhotoShop.  Qt and KDE had a similar requirement
before Qt was released under the GPL.  See:

	http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLIncompatibleLibs

 - Jon