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You may be right, but can you supply a citation for this? I believe many open-core software vendors work around this idea by doing exactly what you suggest: cre

You may be right, but can you supply a citation for this? I believe many open-core software vendors work around this idea by doing exactly what you suggest: creating an API barrier where the proprietary software lives on one side and the GPL'd software on the other. It requires some care so you don't cross GPL'd software into the proprietary side, but it's fairly common. I think the Linux Nvidia GPU driver works this way.

compsciphd 6y ago
citation that the FSF believes that GPLd libraries when dynamically linked require the all the code to be GPLd? https://gitlab.com/gnu-clisp/clisp/blob/dd313099db351c90431c1c90332192edce2bb5c9/doc/Why-CLISP-is-under-GPL https://gitlab.com/gnu-clisp/clisp/blob/dd313099db351c90431c... or something else? I agree that many create that API barrier (ex: ZFS on Linux). Those that argue that ZFS on Linux is legally problematic agree with the FSF's definition (which I would argue leads to the belief that APIs are copyrightable). Those that think ZFS on Linux is on a fine footing believe that APIs aren't copyrightable and one can create a shim to decouple your non GPLd code from GPL "libraries", especially if the coupling that ends up happening is never distributed as done by the end user.
- coldpie 6y ago
  Yes, that's exactly what I was looking for. Thanks for the read, it was very interesting. I thought this was a settled matter, but it looks like I was wrong.
salawat 6y ago
It's called a GPL condom, and that's a bit different in the end in that the GPL mandates GPL'ing code that links against GPL symbols. It's more of a contract than copyright. If you want to use these in your code, you must GPL, or reimplement at your leisure! That's less Copyright in the sense that it's mandating the relinquishing of monopolistic control of the work product in question to the public. Oracle wants the opposite. They want Java used everywhere, and the right to sue anyone who does anything too similar to it too. This is absolutely an act of monopolistic market shaping. No smaller firm would ever have utilized this nuclear option of a lawsuit given the widespread damage this could potentially cause to the entire software ecosystem. This would honestly be enough to get me moving completely out of Software if the Court screws the pooch on this badly enough. I'm not spending the rest of my life debugging code that as a matter of fact must be run through obfuscate steps to avoid copyright liability.

compsciphd 6y ago

citation that the FSF believes that GPLd libraries when dynamically linked require the all the code to be GPLd? https://gitlab.com/gnu-clisp/clisp/blob/dd313099db351c90431c1c90332192edce2bb5c9/doc/Why-CLISP-is-under-GPL https://gitlab.com/gnu-clisp/clisp/blob/dd313099db351c90431c... or something else? I agree that many create that API barrier (ex: ZFS on Linux). Those that argue that ZFS on Linux is legally problematic agree with the FSF's definition (which I would argue leads to the belief that APIs are copyrightable). Those that think ZFS on Linux is on a fine footing believe that APIs aren't copyrightable and one can create a shim to decouple your non GPLd code from GPL "libraries", especially if the coupling that ends up happening is never distributed as done by the end user.

coldpie 6y ago
Yes, that's exactly what I was looking for. Thanks for the read, it was very interesting. I thought this was a settled matter, but it looks like I was wrong.

salawat 6y ago

It's called a GPL condom, and that's a bit different in the end in that the GPL mandates GPL'ing code that links against GPL symbols. It's more of a contract than copyright. If you want to use these in your code, you must GPL, or reimplement at your leisure! That's less Copyright in the sense that it's mandating the relinquishing of monopolistic control of the work product in question to the public. Oracle wants the opposite. They want Java used everywhere, and the right to sue anyone who does anything too similar to it too. This is absolutely an act of monopolistic market shaping. No smaller firm would ever have utilized this nuclear option of a lawsuit given the widespread damage this could potentially cause to the entire software ecosystem. This would honestly be enough to get me moving completely out of Software if the Court screws the pooch on this badly enough. I'm not spending the rest of my life debugging code that as a matter of fact must be run through obfuscate steps to avoid copyright liability.