commercial use

[Ethan Blanton]

Luke Schierer spake unto us the following wisdom:
> Using an API to interact with a GPLed program is a sort of grey area. 
> The project's historical stance on the question has always been that
> any pidgin plugin, being sucked in and run as part of the same process
> in the OS, must also be under the GPL.  

*Remote* APIs are a grey area; the C language API is not.  If you use
the Pidgin C language API, whether you extended it first or not,
anything linked to that API *must* be GPL.

> I suspect though that you could use Pidgin's DBUS API or write a
> plugin (under the GPL) that presents a similar API, and then interact
> with that API from another program running as a separate process, to
> provide separation between the GPL'ed code and the non-GPL'ed code.  

If it presents a similar API, it's nothing but an API translation, and
in my belief it is still under the requirements of the GPL.  If it
presents a much *higher level* API, such that a non-libpurple
non-Pidgin program could easily replace Pidgin to serve that API
without that program itself having to *pretend to be Pidgin*, then it
provides sufficient separation.

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
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