On Thu, Nov 04, 1999 at 07:05:18AM +0800, Ian McKellar wrote: > On Tue, Nov 02, 1999 at 08:19:41PM -0600, Andrew Kieschnick wrote: > > > > Gimp plug-ins are not linked into the calling program (they are run as > > separate processes), so you can call them from any program you like > > without violating the GPL. > > Perhaps, but that is open to interpretation. Corel is currently talking with > the author of dpkg which is called as a program (through exec) from a non-GPL > program. He sees this as a GPL violation. > > Ian > It can also be interpreted that using dlopen() to run GPL code is not necessarily a violation. It boils down to the complexity of the interaction between the plugin and the application. If the application just tells the plugin to "load and start" then it's not necessarily a violation even if you are loading it as a shared library. At least that's the impression I got from RMS when I asked him about that. -- Shawn T. Amundson amundson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Research and Development http://www.eventloop.com/ EventLoop, Inc. http://www.snorfle.net/ "The assumption that the universe looks the same in every direction is clearly not true in reality." - Stephen Hawking
