Re: How to releasing code

[Andreas B. <and...@mu...>]

On Wed, Mar 22, 2000 at 10:50:09AM +0200, And...@no... wrote:
> I noticed that the OHCI1394 code is released under GPL. What is the case
> with the rest of 1394 subsystem?

The subsystem is all GPL (as is required for it to be part of the
kernel - it has to be either GPL or a compatible license).
 
> We use libraw1394 to get streaming isochronous data to our DV decoder and
> the DV decoder is part of some viewer application, which in turn is part of
> our complete system. Since the OHCI1394 driver is GPL, does this imply that
> we have to release all our code? I guess that the question results in that
> "part of" must be defined. Does it mean compiled together or is it enough
> for two separately compiled programs to exchange information somehow?

The Linux COPYING file contains the GPL with the following exception:

   NOTE! This copyright does *not* cover user programs that use kernel
 services by normal system calls - this is merely considered normal use
 of the kernel, and does *not* fall under the heading of "derived work".
 [...]
                        Linus Torvalds

Therefore user space programs can be under any license they wish.  The
only other license to care about is libraw1394's license which is
LGPL, so you can again use any license for your own programs linking
to it.

You only have to allow users of your application to link against a
different version of libraw1394 (easy when you use the shared library,
you have to distribute a linkable object without libraw1394 if you
want static linking).  If you make direct modifications of libraw1394
you have to release the source of the new libraw1394 you created,
anything else is yours.

-- 
          Andreas E. Bombe <and...@mu...>
http://home.pages.de/~andreas.bombe/                DSA key 0x04880A44