[gdal-dev] Licensing Policy for drivers and applications

[Tamas Szekeres]

2011/1/30 Even Rouault <even.rouault at mines-paris.org>

>
> On Windows, I think that the actual license of the odbc library doesn't
> really
> count as people won't distribute the windows odbc system library right ?
> Otherwise it would make it impossible to distribute GPL software on Windows
> since the system windows libraries cannot comply with the GPL. A bit
> confused
> here...
>
>
Even,

I would somewhat make the distiction of the term "system library" and 3rd
party libraries which makes some difference with regards how GPL is applied.
There can be found some additional explanation at
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLIncompatibleLibs with the
conclusion of:

<quote>
Both versions of the GPL have an exception to their copyleft, commonly
called the system library exception. If the GPL-incompatible libraries you
want to use meet the criteria for a system library, then you don't have to
do anything special to use them; the requirement to distribute source code
for the whole program does not include those libraries, even if you
distribute a linked executable containing them.

The criteria for what counts as a "system library" vary between different
versions of the GPL. GPLv3 explicitly defines "System Libraries" in section
1, to exclude it from the definition of "Corresponding Source." GPLv2 says
the following, near the end of section 3:

However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not
include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary
form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the
operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself
accompanies the executable.
</quote>

Best regards,

Tamas
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