Non Disclosure Agreement and GPL

[Yves Autran]

The NDA thing is about the informations needed to decode a block of data 
sent by a device. of course nothing relating to any kind of cryptography 
. Providing the .h and .o files for this very specific and well defined 
NDA matter should not be a problem. We do not want to keep the software 
closed, except for the NDA part.

Many thanks for your advices.

simo a écrit :
> On Sun, 2008-03-02 at 10:02 +0100, Yves Autran wrote:
>> I develop a software where I do have a NDA part, how can I handle this?
>>
>> I have to link the code against :
>> glibc (LGPL)
>> libusb (LGPL)
>> libnova (LGPL)
>>
>> if I refer to 
>> http://lists.gpl-violations.org/pipermail/tech/2007-November.txt.gz , I 
>> am allowed to hide the source code for the NDA piece of the code and 
>> publish the sources not relating to the NDA.
>>
>> What should I tell the community ?
>> Can I still use the GPL licensing?
>> How should I behave with the LGPL projects owners/maintainers
>>
>>
>> Thanks a lot for your help in this case.
> 
> It really depends on the terms of the NDA, in many some cases the NDA
> covers the information need to write the software but the software
> itself can be freely released.
> 
> If you wan to keep the software closed and distribute* it you cannot use
> the GPL license.
> 
> The LGPL license is more permissive, you don't necessarily need to
> release the non LGPL portions in source form, but read very well the
> requirements of the LGPL, you still need to make it possible for a party
> to change any LGPL code and recompile the resulting software, so unless
> all LGPL code is loaded as shared objects, you may need to provide .o/.h
> files and Makefiles needed to rebuild the application.
> 
> Simo.
> 
> 
> * distribution is generally any transfer of the software across legal
> boundaries, even a single copy conveyed to a third party is
> distribution.
> 
> 
>