Re: using GPL api to be used in a properietary software

[Stefaan A Eeckels]

On Mon, 14 Mar 2005 01:14:51 -0500
"Alfred M. Szmidt" <ams@gnu.org> wrote:

> > You wanna write an app for our OS? Ask our permission first. Thank
> > you.
> 
> If you license your code under a Free Software license, then you
> recived that permission[0].  The FSF doesn't care for people who wish
> to restrict users of their freedom; it has the opposite goal, to
> protect those freedoms for past and future generations.  And the GPL
> is the tool to achive this goal.

Don't get me wrong - I subscribe to (what I perceive to be) the
goals of Free Software. I cannot understand the apparent obsession
with equating dynamic linking with preparing a derivative work, as
achieving that goal would be, IMHO, a significant reduction in the
rights currently available to the users of any Free or non-Free OS,
independent of the license terms.

> As for what the licencing terms of a non-free operating system are I
> wouldn't know since I don't use non-free software to begin with.

It doesn't matter as long as the copyright statutes are not
interpreted or changed to support a very broad interpretation
of the concept of a derivative work. This, IMHO, is exactly 
what would happen if the FSF's interpretation of the effect
of dynamic linking were to prevail.

> [0]: Many projects, specially system parts of GNU, have special
> clauses or use the Lesser GPL to allow mixing with non-free software.

Which only makes persuing the dynamic linking issue even more futile.

Kind regards,

-- 
Stefaan
-- 
As complexity rises, precise statements lose meaning,
and meaningful statements lose precision. -- Lotfi Zadeh