Re: GTKmm for research/commercial use

[Murray Cumming <murrayc murrayc com>]

On Mon, 2007-01-29 at 17:59 +0000, John Spray wrote:
> On Fri, 2007-01-26 at 23:07 +0100, Riccardo wrote:
> > I'have got a very briefe question: we want to close our source for 
> > competitive reasons and then sell it to support our laboratory; I have 
> > read the LGPL license but still something is not clear: at the moment I 
> > very basically inherit, for example, GTK::Window to create a customized 
> > window for my application, don't a brake the license if i close the 
> > source[as my derived class is actually a GTKmm class with some tunes]?
> 
> It's not made explicit in the LGPL version 2, although I believe that in
> the LGPL version 3 it is likely to be clarified[1] to state that
> subclassing does not constitute a derivative work.
> 
> Technically speaking, when you inherit from a class in a dynamically
> linked library in C++ the parent class's member functions are still
> dynamically linked to, and as such you are still creating an application
> rather than a derivative work.  On the other hand, when you override all
> a class's functions, your headers can end up effectively containing a
> direct copy of the class member declarations from the gtkmm headers,
> which could be interpreted as overstepping the license, although I don't
> think I've ever heard anyone make that claim seriously.

C++ has nothing to do with this. C libraries have headers too, and
struct declarations.

There is no question that gtkmm may be used by closed-source proprietary applications.

> Perhaps it would be a good idea to take an official position (Murray C?)
> and state it on gtkmm.org -- I've noticed a couple of other projects
> doing this[3].
> 
> John
> 
> 1. http://gplv3.fsf.org/lgpl-draft-2006-07-27.html
> 2. http://gtkmm.org/license.shtml
> 3. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=subclass+%22our+interpretation
> +of+the+LGPL%22&btnG=Search
> 
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-- 
Murray Cumming
murrayc murrayc com
www.murrayc.com
www.openismus.com