Hi stevieb,

Disclaimer: I'm not a GNU/GPL advocate, expert, or lawyer, I've just spent some time researching and thinking about the issue, from both sides - I've released GPLed code, and I've been in the situation of wanting to link open source code into proprietary code often enough.

... my distribution will not contain any code of the included library ...

Your argument is one of the common counterarguments to the "any code that touches GPLed code must be GPL as well" stance. If I don't modify the GPLed code, only link to it dynamically, and even distribute the GPLed code, why should that force my code to become GPLed as well? There was - and still is, albeit smaller - a gray area as to what this "linking" thing is. However, I think the GPL has become more clear on this topic, and it sounds to me like your use of the GPLed code falls under the definition of "linking".

I'll just GPL the code and remove the Artistic license

The way I understand the GNU website is that if you place your code under the Perl license (dual license), that's GPL-compatible. But if you want to play it safe of course you can just remove the Artistic License, since under the Perl license your code is GPLed already anyway.

I get the feeling that, unfortunately, many people simply slap the GPL on their code without thinking about whether the LGPL might be more appropriate to their code, and I often think it would help them reach a wider audience. If you do contact the author, perhaps you can get him/her to consider licensing the library under the LGPL instead.

Hope this helps,
-- Hauke D

In reply to Re^2: When linking to a C library, do I need to use its license? by haukex
in thread When linking to a C library, do I need to use its license? by stevieb

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.