Program output - Restricted under GPL?

Mon Nov 17 02:57:36 UTC 2003

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

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Frank Heckenbach, frank at g-n-u.de
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