GPL Violation

[Ethan Blanton]

Jeff Sadowski spake unto us the following wisdom:
> So its a structuring problem?
> If they moved their proprietary code to a dll and made calls to it and
> distributed a binary dll and open sourced the plugin that made calls
> to the proprietary dll then it would be alright? Just curious?

No, because the GPL is transitive in this respect.  Linking to a
plugin which links to a GPL-incompatible plugin is also GPL
incompatible.

These issues are well hashed out on the Internet in various fora, and
there is not complete agreement on where all boundaries lie.  I
suggest that you look into previous FSF and Debian threads on this
matter, in particular.  The Pidgin mailing lists aren't really a place
for license lawyering.

In this specific case, the MeBeam plugin is directly loaded by Pidgin,
and therefore must necessarily be GPL-compatible, and it does not
appear that it is.

Ethan

-- 
The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws [that have no remedy
for evils].  They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor
determined to commit crimes.
		-- Cesare Beccaria, "On Crimes and Punishments", 1764
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 481 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
URL: <http://pidgin.im/pipermail/devel/attachments/20090928/47edc722/attachment.sig>