[thelist] GNU / GPL

[Stephen Rider]

I believe I have seen software that, the first time you run it, goes  
on the internet and downloads needed GPL libraries and installs  
them.  This is supposedly a workaround because the GPLed library is  
not actually distributed with the software itself.

I have no idea of the legality of this.  It's possible the software  
authors doing this break the law.  But I have definitely seen it more  
than once in non-GPL applications.  Worht checking into.

Stephen

On Oct 24, 2007, at 5:12 AM, Fred Jones wrote:

> Can anyone confirm or deny what my clients lawyer says? He says  
> that if
> I create an EXE (to connect to our web site from his desktop) and I  
> use
> in the source code a package from SourceForge which has:
>
> License: GNU General Public License (GPL), GNU Library or Lesser  
> General
> Public License (LGPL)
>
> Then we can NOT sell the EXE because since we used the GNU/GPL  
> software
> (even just in the source code) we have to make the compiled EXE public
> domain.
>
> Is this correct?