Re: Mutter with proprietary OpenGL/ES library ??

[Matteo Settenvini <matteo-ml member fsf org>]

On ven, 2009-07-10 at 05:45 +0100, Joone Hur wrote:
> http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WindowsRuntimeAndGPL
> 
> I am wondering if it is the same case.
> 
> The GPL v2 has the following exception.
> 
> However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not
> include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or
> binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on)
> of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that
> component itself accompanies the executable. 
> 
> Is proprietary OpenGL/ES libraries applied by this exception?

I don't think so. You can work without a HW accelerated OpenGL library,
by using the software renderer of things like MESA, and your system
would run all the same (slow, but still run).

The exception is thought just to mean: hey, if you do a Tic-Tac-Toe
program for Windows in GPLv2, you don't need to provide also the source
code or the executables of all the libraries you link to if they are
critical system ones, like user32.dll, ntoskrnl.dll or, in Unixland,
pthread.so or vmlinux. It would be unpractical, and sometimes outright
impossible.

That doesn't mean you can link to non-GPLv2 executables as you see fit.

Regards,
Matteo