A few comments

[Michael]

Ethan Blanton wrote:
> From the GPL:
> 
>   You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients'
>   exercise of the rights granted herein.
> 
> Requiring the acceptance of a third-party license which is more
> restrictive than the GPL violates this term.  A Pidgin plugin cannot
> violate the GPL itself, and so, transitively, a Pidgin plugin cannot
> link or require software which adds restrictions.  This is the same
> reason that we cannot support OpenSSL on any system but OpenBSD (and,
> some argue, OSX) -- it is licensed under a version of the BSD license
> which adds additional restrictions (regarding advertising).
> 

> 
> That would be correct, if Pidgin's license explicitly allowed non-free
> plugins.  Some software does this; Pidgin does not.
> 
I'm not sure I understand the problem with making your own source code
just for your own plugin available for anyone to look at...  It seems to
be that that would just be free speech.  "I have this following text
file that says some stuff.  If you have some other text files from
places x and y, and you agree to terms z, you might be able to do
something with them.  But you can look at them as much as you want with
no restrictions"

Because the plugin doesn't modify the source of pidgin, and you are not
distributing it compiled, I'm not sure I understand how it can even be
considered a "derivative work."  You just happen to reference some file
names/functions (but only the names of them, not what they do or how
they work) that could only be available if someone had already installed
Pidgin.  All the logic/text of the text file you are distributing was
created by you and you alone, and since you do not distribute it
compiled, you are not including any of other peoples' work in your
file..  Maybe I'm missing something, but I honestly don't understand how
this violates the GPL legally or even the intent of the GPL. :/

Perhaps if you could give me a situation where this would hurt someone..
 From this example with Skype, it seems pretty simple to me that if
someone does not agree with Skype's license, they would never bother
trying to use the plugin..