what does constitute "linking"?

[Thomas Charron]

On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 3:53 PM, Hardy, Allan<allan.hardy at lmco.com> wrote:
> Makes sense in some way. If your applications cannot function without
> the GPL application, that's a derived work and FSF expects you to
> reciprocate the benefits of open source and make your application open
> source. Note: Regardless of the technical form of the integration.
> So if my application sits on a server in New Zealand and my MySQL (GPL)
> database is in France, it wouldn't matter. My application is 100%
> dependent on that GPL database and I am vulnerable to MySQL-Sun/FSF not
> being happy with me.

  I'd have to say most MySQL users in commercial environments disagree
with that statement.  That is a gross exaggeration, and I have never
heard of anyone even questioning if their application, using
Postgresql, MySQL, or any other database provider, would be held
accountable to the license of their database server.

> As another illustration, a  recent example we had to deal with involved
> a a Jabber Server, opensource GPL, and a client application my guys had
> written and wanted to distribute.  The client used a standard protocol
> and could technically talk to any server, commercial or open source,
> that used that protocol.  Where we 'dependent' on the GPL server?  Hard
> to say, there is strong technical case of no we were not dependent
> because of use of a standard protocol.  However we had only tested
> against the GPL server, we only offered support for that server, we
> directed the customer to acquire and use that server, etc.  So we made
> them test/document against at least 2 other servers.  We had the
> documentation/marketing materials go agnostic so to speak, we made sure
> to slant the server choice as a customers choice, etc.  All of this was
> to get us away from any appearance of dependency, and it made our
> product/marketing a bit more robust as well.

  That was just good logical sense to ensure it was compliant with
several implementations of XMPP.  That would be like saying a web
browser which has only been tested against Apache would be potentially
subject to the Apache license.

> In my analysis your Proprietary Application B is a derived work of the
> GPL Work A.  It uses it and seems to depend on it.  I could care less if
> its sockets, dlls, static compiling, etc.  Your adding of a sockets
> wrapper is moot.

  Based on that blanket analysis, anything that runs under Linux is
also subject to the GPL.  He was asking for a legal impression, not a
general personal opinion.

-- 
-- Thomas