RE: [Help-glpk] Command-line and GPL

[Meketon, Marc]

Paul,

In your opinion, would Luca's situation - calling glpsol from a "shell"
command - be arm's length?

-----Original Message-----
From: address@hidden
[mailto:address@hidden On Behalf
Of Paul Mars
Sent: Saturday, June 23, 2007 6:19 AM
To: address@hidden
Subject: Re: [Help-glpk] Command-line and GPL

I guess this is covered in the FAQ at the GNU.org web site at
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLInProprietarySystem

[quote]

You cannot incorporate GPL-covered software in a proprietary system. The
goal of the GPL is to grant everyone the freedom to copy, redistribute,
understand, and modify a program. If you could incorporate GPL-covered
software into a non-free system, it would have the effect of making the
GPL-covered software non-free too.
A system incorporating a GPL-covered program is an extended version of
that program. The GPL says that any extended version of the program must
be released under the GPL if it is released at all. This is for two
reasons: to make sure that users who get the software get the freedom
they should have, and to encourage people to give back improvements that
they make.

However, in many cases you can distribute the GPL-covered software
alongside your proprietary system. To do this validly, you must make
sure that the free and non-free programs communicate at arms length,
that they are not combined in a way that would make them effectively a
single program.

The difference between this and "incorporating" the GPL-covered software
is partly a matter of substance and partly form. The substantive part is
this: 
if the two programs are combined so that they become effectively two
parts of one program, then you can't treat them as two separate
programs. So the GPL has to cover the whole thing.

If the two programs remain well separated, like the compiler and the
kernel, or like an editor and a shell, then you can treat them as two
separate programs--but you have to do it properly. The issue is simply
one of form: 
how you describe what you are doing. Why do we care about this? Because
we want to make sure the users clearly understand the free status of the
GPL-covered software in the collection.

If people were to distribute GPL-covered software calling it "part of" a
system that users know is partly proprietary, users might be uncertain
of their rights regarding the GPL-covered software. But if they know
that what they have received is a free program plus another program,
side by side, their rights will be clear.

[/quote]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Andrew Makhorin" <address@hidden>
To: "Meketon, Marc" <address@hidden>
Cc: <address@hidden>
Sent: Saturday, June 23, 2007 2:16 AM
Subject: Re: [Help-glpk] Command-line and GPL


>> People build commercial applications all the time under Linux.  These
>> applications implicitly call the Linux kernel, and perhaps explicitly
>> call on a variety of commands (which are really applications) like
"mv",
>> "cp" and so on.  Yet these commercial applications are not under the
>> GPL.  I think Luca's situation is similar.
>
> I do not think so. Commercial software does not mean non-free (i.e.
> proprietary) software. On the other hand, if someone does not want to
> make his software free, he is free to make it non-free. However, in
> this case it would be fair not to use free software at all, wouldn't
> be? It seems to me this is the main point of GPL. (Sorry for my bad
> English.)
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Help-glpk mailing list
> address@hidden
> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-glpk
> 






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