Picking a license

[Patrick Maupin]

On May 8, 11:29 pm, Paul Rubin <no.em... at nospam.invalid> wrote:

> No it doesn't (not like the above).  You, the licensee under the GPL,
> can make those combinations and use them as much as you want on your own
> computers.  You just can't distribute the resulting derivative to other
> people.  With proprietary software you can't redistribute the software
> to other people from day zero (or even use more copies within your own
> company than you've paid for), regardless of whether you've combined it
> with anything.  And since you usually don't get the source code, it's
> awfully hard to make derived combinatoins.

But the point is that a lot of small developers who are writing
software don't need to distribute any software other than software
they wrote themselves.  Their customers will have Oracle/Microsoft/IBM/
CA/whatever licenses already.  Companies like Oracle support various
APIs that allow custom software to be connected to their software, so
if Carl is writing stuff to support Oracle, he can just distribute his
software to the customer, and let the customer link it himself.

Now when Carl's software links to GPLed software, it gets
interesting.  Although it's probably a legal overreach, the FSF often
attempts to claim that software like Carl's, *by itself*, must be
licensed under the GPL, simply because it can link to GPLed software,
even if it doesn't actually contain any GPLed software.  (Whether it's
a legal overreach or not, it's the position of the FSF, and of a lot
of authors who use the GPL, so morally it's probably best to follow
their wishes.)

The end result is that Carl can deliver software to his customer that
lets the customer link Oracle and Microsoft software together, for
example, but is prohibited from delivering software that lets the
customer link GPLed code to Oracle code, because the FSF considers
that software that would do that is a "derived work" and that Carl is
making a distribution when he gives it to his customer, and he is not
allowed to distribute GPLed code that links to proprietary Oracle
code.

Regards,
Pat