[Ffmpeg-devel] Patch for dynamic liba52.so loading

Ronald S. Bultje rbultje
Sat Jun 11 20:58:58 CEST 2005


On Sat, 2005-06-11 at 20:20, M?ns Rullg?rd wrote:
> When you do think about it, I hope you will see past the FSF's
> political agenda, and apply the proper combination of law and logic
> according to the letter, rather than mistaking the wishful thinking
> of the FSF for the truth.  Be they right or wrong, they are definitely
> biased in their opinions.

Even if, strictly taken, some country somewhere in the world in some
obscure way does not disallow linking GPL with closed-source binaries,
it may still be the intention of the author of a GPL'ed lib to not see
this happen *under any circumstances* (which, from past experience,
seems to be the case for the liba52 author). Linking isn't necessarily
just gcc or ld here, those dlopen() hacks may also qualify as linking to
the authors. As authors, they are very much so in the position to have
opinions on that. And (imo) they may very well feel angry about it when
it happens, even though the law says it is not illegal given the license
under which they released it. This just tells them that in that
particular country, they will not win a possible lawsuit about the
issue.

Law is only interesting to lawyers anyway. I tend to care more about
actual intentions.

Ronald

-- 
Ronald S. Bultje <rbultje at ronald.bitfreak.net>





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