Re: Using GTK+ code in a GPL application.

[Erik Mouw <J A K Mouw ITS TUDelft NL>]

On Tue, Dec 26, 2000 at 01:56:57PM +0200, Berend De Schouwer wrote:
> I am hacking on Balsa (a GPL program), and need to subclass gtkentry.
> I have done this successfully.  I would like to do more, but to make
> my life easier, I would like to cut-and-paste some code from GTK+
> into Balsa.
> 
> This appears to be legal, according to my interpretation of the
> LGPL and GPL licenses, and according to http://www.gnu.org, but
> I thought I'd be friendly and ask anyway.

Yes, it's legal to change LGPL-ed code in to GPL. From COPYING.LIB:

    3. You may opt to apply the terms of the ordinary GNU General Public
  License instead of this License to a given copy of the Library.  To do
  this, you must alter all the notices that refer to this License, so
  that they refer to the ordinary GNU General Public License, version 2,
  instead of to this License.  (If a newer version than version 2 of the
  ordinary GNU General Public License has appeared, then you can specify
  that version instead if you wish.)  Do not make any other change in
  these notices.

    Once this change is made in a given copy, it is irreversible for
  that copy, so the ordinary GNU General Public License applies to all
  subsequent copies and derivative works made from that copy.

    This option is useful when you wish to copy part of the code of
  the Library into a program that is not a library.


Erik

-- 
J.A.K. (Erik) Mouw, Information and Communication Theory Group, Department
of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Information Technology and Systems,
Delft University of Technology, PO BOX 5031,  2600 GA Delft, The Netherlands
Phone: +31-15-2783635  Fax: +31-15-2781843  Email: J A K Mouw its tudelft nl
WWW: http://www-ict.its.tudelft.nl/~erik/