[PD] gpl vs creative commons

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

On Jan 29, 2008, at 3:08 AM, IOhannes m zmoelnig wrote:

> Roman Haefeli wrote:
>> ask a lawyer to check in detail, if this is true. however, if  
>> licenses
>> could cross 'levels of abstractions' in the sense of pd patches being
>> affected by the license of pd,
>
> afaik, licenses do not cross "levels of abstractions".
> however, if i have a collection of abstractions published under the  
> GPL, then i think i don't cross this magical border.
>
> next comes the question, what is the difference between an  
> abstraction and an external non-abstraction object. afaik, GPL does  
> not dissolve just because of languages used. (that is: porting of  
> code from one language to another is (to my knowledge) not really  
> affected by the GPL (e.g.: you can chose the license again) as it  
> usually involves re-coding an algorithm rather than re-using pieces  
> of code.; but this is unrelated to the language a library is  
> written in)
>
> finally, i am still unsure about the "static linking" clause, and  
> how it affects an interpreted language.
> i guess, if you have a  patch that depends on a GPL'ed pdlib, and  
> you are distributing your patch with this library (e.g. for  
> convencience reasons), then you are kind of _statically linking_  
> and thus your patch is automatically GPL'ed too.
>
> but i really don't know
>
> mfga.sd
> IOhannes

Dynamically linked libraries also trigger the GPL.  For example, most  
Linux kernel modules are dynamically linked into the kernel these  
days, and they definitely required to be GPL.

PD patches are not a clear case like the Cubase example because  
Cubase projects are clearly not programming.  If you consider a Pd  
patch a program, then it means it triggers the share-alike/copyleft  
conditions of the GPL.  When you load a patch, you are forcing all of  
the compiled objects to be dynamically linked in, so the patch is  
definitely linked.

.hc


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