Hi,
I'm working for a company which going to develop two applications. But one application will be licensed under GPL and the other will not. Is it still possible to use output from the GPL'd application and read it with the other application without violating the GPL rules? The output is data from measurements of wireless networks.
Regards, Fredrik
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Hi,
Am Don, 2003-11-13 um 09.18 schrieb Fredrik Lundgren:
I'm working for a company which going to develop two applications. But one application will be licensed under GPL and the other will not. Is it still possible to use output from the GPL'd application and read it with the other application without violating the GPL rules? The output is data from measurements of wireless networks.
I'd say yes. Much like you are allowed to write a text file in emacs and then import it into <insert any proprietary program name here>.
One program reading the output of another program doesn't make the whole a derived work. Not even, if they are connected via mechanisms like a Unix style pipe.
Thanks,
Reinhard Müller wrote:
Am Don, 2003-11-13 um 09.18 schrieb Fredrik Lundgren:
I'm working for a company which going to develop two applications. But one application will be licensed under GPL and the other will not. Is it still possible to use output from the GPL'd application and read it with the other application without violating the GPL rules? The output is data from measurements of wireless networks.
I'd say yes. Much like you are allowed to write a text file in emacs and then import it into <insert any proprietary program name here>.
If the output contains substantial parts from GPL'd code, it might fall under the GPL as well, unless you make a special exception (such as GNU bison and flex do, in some circumstances).
Even then, reading GPL'd data into non-GPL'd programs is usually possible (details depending on the license of the other program, of course).
IANAL.
Frank
On 13 Nov 2003 09:33:01 +0100, Reinhard Müller said:
One program reading the output of another program doesn't make the whole a derived work. Not even, if they are connected via mechanisms like a Unix style pipe.
Well, it depends. The GPL does on purpose not specify what "derived" exactly means. For example if you use a mechanism as above to work around the requirements of the GPL, this may very well constitute a derived work. A better test for this is, whether the output or input the GPLed program is generic enough to be a useful program without employing the non-GPL program.
Werner