On Tue, 22 Mar 2005, Kiran Raosaheb Patil wrote:
Thanks for your suggestions.
My pleasure.
I have one doubt, how will it work with executables?
I don't know. This is just my opinion, but I think distributing executables is risky and so far I haven't done it, myself. Imagine someone claims that an executable you distribute contains malicious code that has damaged his computer. You might win in the end, but it could be difficult and costly.
My code needs to be linked with GNU-GPL libraries, and one non-free library as well.
As I understood, the resulting executable will be covered by GPL and hence I cannot make it available without providing full-source, including all libraries..Is that true?
The GNU GPL obligates you to distribute your source code. If you've linked with a non-free library (using static linkage) and distribute the resulting object code (executable or not), you will probably be violating the terms of the license of the non-free library. Even if you use dynamic linkage, which implies that the library must be installed on users' systems, you will still be including header files from the non-free library in your source code, which will also probably violate the terms of the license of the non-free library. In short, I don't think you'll be able to make your package depend on non-free software and still make it free in the sense of the GNU GPL.
Laurence Finston