[LAD] GPL Violation Alert! - Sorry if this is a duplicate

[Gabriel M. Beddingfield]

On Tue, 4 Aug 2009, Chris Cannam wrote:
>
> If your interpretation was correct, then I could require Cubase to be
> GPL'd by writing a VST plugin for it and publishing it under the GPL.
> This would obviously be absurd.  In real life, a court faced with a

No, Steinburg wouldn't be held to the GPL... your user would.

Your users need special permission from you (the plug-in copyright holder) 
in order to link your GPL program against a closed-source program. 
Otherwise, it's your users who are making the violation.

For example, before Qt was GPL, the FSF issued a blanket permission and 
retroactive "amnesty" for all FSF programs that have been linked against 
the Qt toolkit.  They did this because they didn't see Qt as has having a 
compatible license... but people were linking GPL programs to it.

Peace,
Gabriel