RE: [eclipse-dev] GPL'd Plug-ins

["Scott Stanchfield" <scott@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I think the only potential gotcha would be if a GPL'd plugin provided an
extension point that another plugin uses. It's a fine line, but I think
technically the new plugin is extending the old plugin, and the GPL would
call for viral infection at that point. (That may be more "spirit" of the
GPL than "letter", though).

IMHO, Simply dropping a GPL plugin into Eclipse would be very much like
dropping a GPL'd library into your library path on your computer. It doesn't
make everything on your computer GPL. However, any programs that were
written to take advantage of that GPL'd lib are infected.

Of course, IANAL either... (nor do I desire to become one)
-- Scott

====================
Scott Stanchfield
FGM, Inc.
scotts@xxxxxxx
====================



> -----Original Message-----
> From: eclipse-dev-admin@xxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:eclipse-dev-admin@xxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of John Healy
> Sent: Monday, June 09, 2003 5:09 PM
> To: eclipse-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: RE: [eclipse-dev] GPL'd Plug-ins
>
>
> Hi Dave,
>
> I looked at that FAQ as part of my investigation but I'm not sure it's
> of much help.  Point #12 talks about distributing a derived work, which
> wasn't really what I was getting at.
>
> I guess I could rephrase my question as:  are plug-ins loaded in such a
> way that the GPL would propagate across the plug-in boundary and consume
> the entire framework?  (from other emails in this thread, I'm guess that
> the answer is yes.)  Part two would be, does eclipse.org have any
> policies with respect to plug-in licensing?
>
> John
>
> On Mon, 2003-06-09 at 14:56, Dave Orme wrote:
> >
> > > I've noticed that there are eclipse plug-ins available that
> > > are licensed under the GPL (but not from eclipse.org).  I was
> > > just wondered if, given the incompatibility between the GPL
> > > and CPL, GPL'd  plug-ins are acceptable.
> > >
> > > It seems to me that the when a GPL'd plug-in is loaded, the
> > > GPL would consume the framework unless the plug-in runs as a
> > > separate program and talks to the framework through some kind
> > > of IPC scheme (I'm not familiar with the details of how
> > > plug-ins are loaded in eclipse, I really doubt it works that way).
> > >
> > > Can anyone comment on whether or not GPL'd (not LGPL'd)
> > > plug-ins are ok form a licensing perspective?
> >
> > IANAL; IBM's lawyers have created the following faq:
> >
> > http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/os-cplfaq.html
> >
> > >From the faq, it appears that publishing Eclipse plug-ins
> under the GPL is
> > probably problematic (see point #12).
> >
> >
> > Dave
>
>
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