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Re: GPL licenced Java application using non GPL jars (libraries)


From: Ben
Subject: Re: GPL licenced Java application using non GPL jars (libraries)
Date: Mon, 22 May 2006 21:53:50 +0100
User-agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.2 (Windows/20060308)

So you're saying that the copyright owners of the third party jars the software uses cannot sue me for changing their licencing terms if I distribute the binary version of my software with their jars? (Again this assumes the GPL licence affects all libraries that are linked to my code).

Thanks,

Benjamin

John Hasler wrote:
Ben writes:
The third party jars are used via method calls, not by inheritance. Even
so the GPL is too vague. I suspect as a small development if it went to
court I could argue that there was no intent to deliberately violate the
licence, I intended to benefit society, and due to the vagueness of the
licence the general consensus/common sense would hold true. However I
won't be releasing the software under GPL (yet) because of the potential
risk.

If you are the sole copyright owner there is no risk of you being sued.
The license is a conditional grant from you to others.  If they fail to
comply with the conditions you can sue them for copyright infringement, but
no one has standing to sue you for "violating" your own license.

The problem with doing as you propose is that no one will distribute your
package because they cannot be sure that they can do so without running
afoul of your conflicting terms.

Just provide exceptions as I suggested in another article.  This is a
well-established practice.  It may be superfluous, but without it your
package is not going to get distributed by anyone but you.


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