'GPL encumbrance problems'

[Andy Green]

Les Mikesell wrote:

> Or, the gadget depends on code already written and under another
> license.  The GPL is all-or-nothing in this regard so if any
> component (with some interpretation of components...) needs
> a non-GPL license, none can have it.  Personally I think this

That isn't right as stated... Fedora contains packages under many
different licenses

# rpm -qa --queryformat "%{LICENSE}\n" | sort | uniq
AFL/GPL
Apacheish
Apache License
Apache Software License
Artistic
Artistic or GPL
BitTorrent Open Source License
Boost Software License
BSD
BSD-compatible
BSD/GPL
BSD/GPL dual license
BSDish
BSD-like
BSD-like and LGPL
BSD-style
BSD style + APSL
...


In a situation where the proprietary app is usermode only, and
dynamically links to LGPL stuff, running on top of a mixed / GPL OS like
Fedora makes no problems.

If the proprietary code you needed has to go in kernelmode, yes you can
have a problem if you want to distribute the resulting binary around.

-Andy
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