On 28 Mar 2002, at 11:02, Sven Neumann wrote:

I heard that Gobe Productive (http://www.gobe.com/) ships with plug-ins based on source code from The GIMP and sent them a letter asking for source code. I'm forwarding their answer here...

IANAL, so IMO these are the things you should run by the FSF, just to make sure.

(zblt... acronym overload...)

Specifically, I wonder if using GPL'ed plug-ins cause the main app to become GPL'ed.

On 28 Mar 2002, at 12:35, Sven Neumann wrote:

"Branko Collin" writes:

I heard that Gobe Productive (http://www.gobe.com/) ships with plug-ins based on source code from The GIMP and sent them a letter asking for source code. I'm forwarding their answer here...

IANAL, so IMO these are the things you should run by the FSF, just to make sure.

(zblt... acronym overload...)

Specifically, I wonder if using GPL'ed plug-ins cause the main app to become GPL'ed.

I think the license could indeed be interpreted in that way. Actually a couple of commercial applications showed up over the years that definitely (or most probably) use GIMP code to some extent. This is at least annoying and I wonder if we should start to defend our licence. On the other hand we might be interested in establishing the GIMP plug-in protocol and could even benefit from commercial apps supporting it.

I find that hard to judge. For all we know, these 'lost' plug-ins cost us our competitive edge, equalling less users, equalling less developers. Is that important? I don't know.

Anyway, just asking the FSF what's up with this won't mean they start sueing right away. But the FSF do have the legal knowledge that we probably lack.

On Thu, 2002-03-28 at 05:59, Branko Collin wrote:

On 28 Mar 2002, at 11:02, Sven Neumann wrote:

I heard that Gobe Productive (http://www.gobe.com/) ships with plug-ins based on source code from The GIMP and sent them a letter asking for source code. I'm forwarding their answer here...

IANAL, so IMO these are the things you should run by the FSF, just to make sure.

Specifically, I wonder if using GPL'ed plug-ins cause the main app to become GPL'ed.

Similarly, IANAL, but the whole debate surrounding these types of issues is what is it that constitutes "linking". RMS has made it clear (as I recall) that simply calling a GPL program does not constitute linking. So you can run ``system( "cp file1 file2" );'' without violating the GPL if the 'cp' program is covered by the GPL. You cannot, however, do something like ``dlopen( "/bin/cp" );''

Now, what has been done with the plugins? To my best understanding (and please consult the FSF), if the plugin can run as a standalone app, they are OK. If the plugin is being dlopened or otherwise "link"ed into the program, they are in violation of the GPL. If they modified the plugins to run as standalone programs, and made these changes available under the GPL as required by the GPL, they may have gotten away with it.

Unfair, but not a violation. GPL 2 is not bulletproof (especially with anything web-based and the "distribution" clause). Naturally, I've done no research, and haven't even looked at their ZIPped mods, and know little about GIMP internals, but that won't stop me from giving an uninformed opinion!!!

Either way, I hope everything can be resolved amicably ...

Cheers, Chris