Re: [LAD] GPL and plugins

Victor Lazzarini wrote:
> I think this is the closest to the scenario I am envisaging. There is a
> host, which is non-Free and commercial, currently using a non-Free
> plugin, which is packaged with it. This non-Free plugin gets substituted
> by a Free plugin, which is free because, amongst other things, it links
> to a GPL dynamic library. Is this breaking the original GPL license of
> the dynamic lib the plugin links to?

Yes. IANAL and all that, but the GPL is very clear on that, see e.g.:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLPluginsInNF

In fact, library authors decidedly use the GPL (rather than the LGPL
which allows linking against proprietary software) to prevent
unsolicited use of their libraries in commercial software.

Of course, the vendor can always ask you and the author(s) of the 3rd
party library for a commercial license which allows it to distribute the
plugin with its commercial program. You can also put an exception into
your plugin license which specifically allows linking against the
commercial program, but you'd still have to ask the author(s) of the
GPL'd library for the same kind of permission.

HTH,
Albert

-- 
Dr. Albert Gr"af
Dept. of Music-Informatics, University of Mainz, Germany
Email:  Dr.Graef@email-addr-hidden-online.de, ag@email-addr-hidden-mainz.de
WWW:    http://www.musikinformatik.uni-mainz.de/ag
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