From: Art Gillespie (agillesp@i-no.com)
Date: Mon Feb 14 2000 - 14:33:27 EST
Peter,
Under the standard GPL, including proprietary code 'taints' this
proprietary code, since, as you point out, the GPL requires that the
code also be available under the GPL. The license isn't specific about
'data', which is what your question is centered around, but a liberal
interpretation of the license would suggest that the data you speak of
could very well be tainted by the strict GPL.
Luckily, the FSF created the LGPL to address this very issue (see
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lesser.html). The 'Lesser General Public
License' is intended to allow proprietary software to link to free
software libraries (or vice versa), without tainting the 'closed'
portion of the code. Since libxml is available under the LGPL (see the
xmlsoft.org website), you are free to distribute it with proprietary
code and certainly with proprietary data.
However, your responsibilities as to making changes to libxml itself
publicly available still hold.
Hope this helps,
Art
> > > under the GPL, when this 'derived work' needs an XML data file
> > > a third party holds copyright of? (provided that this third party will
> > > allow me the use of their copyrighted data)
> >
> > the data file is an input ? if yes i don't see the problem.
> [...]
>
> The data in question is from medical coding schemes. Lots of
> entries like:
> 17328 = "Wolf-Parkinson-White Syndrom type B (certain)"
>
> Most of these coding schemes are unfortunately copyrighted and
> subject to substantial license fees.
>
> So, if I include these entries in .h files, this will make them freely
> distributable under GPL and the organizations owning the coding
> schemes will probably cut me in several pieces.
>
> As a workaround, I would put the coding into a XML file and
> distribute it only subject to the need of paying the license fees to
> the owning organization. (And against proof of having paid for the
> nastier organizations).
>
> But, as this is only a workaround for putting these data entries
> directly into the program, I was wondering whether this is in
> violation of the GPL..
>
> Regards,
> Peter
>
>
>
> ----
> Message from the list xml@xmlsoft.org
> Archived at : http://xmlsoft.org/messages/
> to unsubscribe: echo "unsubscribe xml" | mail majordomo@xmlsoft.org
---- Message from the list xml@xmlsoft.org Archived at : http://xmlsoft.org/messages/ to unsubscribe: echo "unsubscribe xml" | mail majordomo@xmlsoft.org
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Aug 02 2000 - 12:30:03 EDT