GPL License question

R

rbuenger

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I just searched a bit in the new Proteus4 Beta and recognized that it use imservices under the GPL License.

And because I haven't anything better to do I started reading a bit in this license and found:

You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.
Click to expand...

But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License
Click to expand...

So my english is maybe not the best and all those license's and law's are always a bit complicated. But for me this sounds as Proteus4 have to be distributed for free under the GPL.

Is't possible for someone to take a look at the GPL License.

Proteus is a great work and I like it (even have paid for version 3) but he should not use other software parts (imservices) if he is not allowed to uses it in that way because for a normal user it looks like he has done all the work and the GPL is placed "deep" in the app packet folders.
 
Can you provide a link to the imservices website? The details of exactly how the library is linked to the program, and especially if the library is under the GPL or the LGPL, are important.

That said, I found an archive of some discussions at versiontracker, where the author of proteus claims he contacted the authors of imservices, and they say that they don't mind that he's making use of their library as he does...
 
I just found a text saying that an application package is considered just a folder under the GPL. And then imservices is just a part in this folder and not included in the application itself.

So there seems to be no problem with this if you take the app as a folder. So my question is solved with this finding and Proteus is not violating the GPL.

BTW: Proteus 4 is realy a nice update.
 
I think though that technically, a library becomes 'part of' a program at runtime according to the GPL. So, if the program uses a GPL library, even if only at runtime, it should be GPL also - that's why there is the LGPL, so you can make a library usable by non-GPL programs.

Of course, if the authors of imservices don't mind, that's OK.
 
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