5 Aug
2009
5 Aug
'09
7:24 a.m.
Hallo,
Steve Harris hat gesagt: // Steve Harris wrote:
Consensus seems to be that they need to distribute
code for the
plugins they include, but whether they are allowed to ship the plugins
is another question.
The crazy thing is that if they shipped their host in one package, and
redistributed some LADPSA plugins (with source) in another then they
would not be violating the licence as far as I can see - both actions
are perfectly legitimate in isolation.
Are they? See below.
However, shipping them in one
package might be some sort of violation.
According to the slightly skewed view of the FSF, even the former could be a
violation:
If the program dynamically links plug-ins, and they make function calls to
each other and share data structures, we believe they form a single program,
which must be treated as an extension of both the main program and the
plug-ins. This means that combination of the GPL-covered plug-in with the
non-free main program would violate the GPL. However, you can resolve that
legal problem by adding an exception to your plug-in's license, giving
permission to link it with the non-free main program.
Quotint the GPL-FAQ. However applied to LADSPA this would mean, that
GPL-plug-ins are not allowed in commercial software *at all*, and this would
also be the case for e.g. Renoise, even when it doesn't ship the plugins, but
uses the system-wide installed plugins.
So if Beat Kangzs isn't allowed to load swh-plugins, then Renoise wouldn't be
allowed neither, as far as I understand it. And Renoise does load them, I just
checked. So we'd have another violation alert for Renoise. Happy hunting. :)
Ciao
--
Frank