Fw: Query about GNU-GPL

[Laurence Finston]

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