[Lazarus] GPL'ed projects and closed-sourced tools

[Hans-Peter Diettrich]

Marco van de Voort schrieb:

>> AFAIR there exists a requirement (how strong?), that a user shall be 
>> able to build the project from the source code, so that everybody can 
>> trust his selfmade binaries, and is not bound to binaries supplied by 
>> third parties. For this reason all modified source code must be made 
>> available to the users.
> 
> No. The GPL hits the person who is distributing binaries. If the user does
> the final link of open source code to binary proprietary code, and doesn't
> distribute the result, this is not a GPL violation.

The GPL hits *every* distributor of GPL'ed material, be binary or in 
source code. The distributor has the duties, and the user has the 
rights, specified in such licenses (not only GPL).

Interestingly modifications must be made available only to the users of 
that modified code, not to everybody. This leaves a grey zone in 
software contracts, where the provider can e.g. bind his client(s) by an 
NDA. While the user has the right to redistribute the modified GPL'ed 
source code, doing so will violate his contract with his immediate 
provider. [from d.s.r.m+u]


> Since FSF afaik considers dynlinking linking in the GPL sense, distributing
> a GPLed binary that links to a proprietary DLL that doesn't come with the OS
> is a violation in principle.

This again is a result of the trusting principle, mentioned above. The 
use of closed source code is not allowed in (modified) GPL'ed projects. 
Otherwise everybody could turn any third-party closed source project 
into a GPL'ed (open source) project, by linking it to some GPL'ed 
material. The exclusion of OS modules was required for the same reason, 
since otherwise it were impossible to provide and use non-GPL'ed 
programs or libraries on a GPL'ed platform.

DoDi