Re: GPL vs non-GPL device drivers

On Tue, 20 Feb 2007 12:00:51 +0100, Bernd Petrovitsch said:
Flame bait alert:
I heard a talk from an Austrian lawyer an according to his believes (and
I don't know if he is the only one or if there lots of) one must see
from the "users" view if the GPL spreads over or not (and the usual
technical terms like "linking" are basically irrelevant).
E.g.:
- You are distributing an application which links against a GPL-library.
If you provide a link and the user/customer has to get and install that
library, your application can have any license you wish.
- If you distribute an application and it installs automatically a
library (e.g. from the CD where your application is installed), your
applications license must "fit" wit the library license.

So tell me - if RedHat distributes a non-GPL program that uses a GPL
library that is included as part of the distribution, but *not* one that's
usually installed, which rules apply?

Even better - does this mean that I can *intentionally* bypass the licensing by
including a installer script that removed a problematic library, and then
forces the user to re-install it?


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