The day we put Windows under GPL

A few weeks ago some people were trying to convince me (but they didn’t manage to) that any program that loads a library (i.e. binary) which is under GPL has to be under GPL automatically as well. Now, this viral nature of the GPL is what sucks most with the GPL and that’s the reason I try to avoid it in most cases – and in fact I am going to cancel distribution of one of my programs under GPL and will make it available under a more liberal license.

Anyway, I eventually tried to convince them that this idea is totally ridiculous, since it would mean that I as a developer would be able to force Windows (any OS is also a – very complex – program) under the GPL by simply creating a DLL that does nothing, distributing it under the terms of the GPL and load it into Windows (doesn’t matter which flavor). Now I wonder what happens if you confront the fellows over in Redmond with such weird ideas 🙄 … presumably you’ll end up in a madhouse 😆

My example was, that this idea would allow us to tell our grandchildren: “… and that was the day we forced Windows under the GPL” 😉 … rather ridiculous. So don’t be fooled by the restrictive terms of the GPL; as long as no source code is involved which is under the GPL, you can always link dynamically(!) to binaries which are under the GPL. So the only thing that should be under a liberal license in any case, would be the interface header/unit … well, unless you want to actively prevent people from using your binary (which is somewhat contrary to the OSS-idea).

// Oliver

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One Response to The day we put Windows under GPL

  1. Jorge says:

    I think LGPL does that work, allow other people to link libraries to non-GPL programs, besides gpl works down and no up, thats why you can write a gpl windows device driver or programs like emule are gpl but they use mfc.

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