Les Mikesell wrote:
Or, the gadget depends on code already written and under another license. The GPL is all-or-nothing in this regard so if any component (with some interpretation of components...) needs a non-GPL license, none can have it. Personally I think this
That isn't right as stated... Fedora contains packages under many different licenses
# rpm -qa --queryformat "%{LICENSE}\n" | sort | uniq AFL/GPL Apacheish Apache License Apache Software License Artistic Artistic or GPL BitTorrent Open Source License Boost Software License BSD BSD-compatible BSD/GPL BSD/GPL dual license BSDish BSD-like BSD-like and LGPL BSD-style BSD style + APSL ...
In a situation where the proprietary app is usermode only, and dynamically links to LGPL stuff, running on top of a mixed / GPL OS like Fedora makes no problems.
If the proprietary code you needed has to go in kernelmode, yes you can have a problem if you want to distribute the resulting binary around.
-Andy