Assistance/advice in choosing a license for POV-Ray 4.0

Rodrigo Barbosa rodrigob at suespammers.org
Mon Nov 14 05:46:26 UTC 2005


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On Mon, Nov 14, 2005 at 08:57:10AM +1100, Chris Cason wrote:
> So the question is - does dynamic linking result in a derivative work ?
> It seems to me that the answer must be 'no'. (If it were 'yes' it would
> raise interesting questions on the Windows platform, where it is common
> to have third-party libraries hooked into the OS in such a way as to
> cause your app to unknowingly load them).

IANAL etc etc.

It really depends.

You see, for you to dynamicaly link some code, you need to make
references to it on your own code, so the linker can know how to
hook to the functions inside the dynamic library.

So, as you can see, you are doing more than simply linking to the
library. 

(C + Linux follows)

When I write a program that will use zlib, I need to both link
against libz (-lz) and include its header (#include <zlib.h>).
So even if the library isn't inside my code, its header is.
And since the header is part of the library, it is covered by
its license.

At least in that case, I'm 100% it will constitute a derivative
work. That is why many libraries (libc etc) as licenses under the LGPL.

On the other hand, the dietlibc library is licensed under the GPL. So
if you are linking against it, your code MUST also be licensed under
the GPL (or compatible license etc etc).

Best regards,

- -- 
Rodrigo Barbosa <rodrigob at suespammers.org>
"Quid quid Latine dictum sit, altum viditur"
"Be excellent to each other ..." - Bill & Ted (Wyld Stallyns)

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