[Bf-committers] Quicktime License issue....

[Alistair Riddoch]

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On Thu, Jan 23, 2003 at 02:00:23PM +0100, Arne Schmitz wrote:
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> Am Donnerstag, 23. Januar 2003 13:16 schrieb Ton Roosendaal:
> > So no GPL project uses apple quicktime?
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> MPlayer uses the Windows Quicktime DLLs. See http://www.mplayerhq.hu for =
more=20
> details. They don't link against them, but load them via a loader library=
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> based on WINE, as far as I remember.
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> But I don't think that the MPlayer code is very clean or easily adaptable=
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> blender. :-) -- Apart from the legal aspect...
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> But in my opinion linking against closed source libraries is NOT prohibit=
ed by=20
> the GPL. Think about all the GPL Motif applications that existed before M=
otif=20
> became opensource.=20
> Also remember that there are GPL'ed Windows applications that are linked=
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> against MFC and stuff.
> See http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WindowsRuntimeAndGPL
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The point being made by the question you link to above relates to
a special exception in clause 3 of the GPL which I quote here:

"However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not incl=
ude
anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with
the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system =
on
which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the
executable."

So if the Quicktime DLLs are normally distributed with the OS, the Compiler
or the Linker, and the DLLs are not included with your program, then
you qualify for this exception.

In your above example, both Motif and the Windows MFC and runtime are norma=
lly
distributed with their respective OS.

I am in contact with the FSFs license engineer, who may have time to answer
more specific questions if you have any.

Al
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Alistair Riddoch
alriddoch@zepler.org
http://zepler.org/~alriddoch/

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