linuxaudio.org

Victor Lazzarini wrote:

quoted text
> 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@t-online.de, ag@muwiinfa.geschichte.uni-mainz.de

WWW:    http://www.musikinformatik.uni-mainz.de/ag

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