Clarifying the GnuPG License

Werner Koch wk at gnupg.org
Tue Jun 18 14:06:12 CEST 2013


On Thu, 13 Jun 2013 11:58, ekleog at gmail.com said:

> IANAL either, but wonder whether hard-coding the GPG program name and arguments
> in your binary would not be sufficient to consider your program as linked to the
> GPG executable.

Running a program is not restricted and you don't even need to com,ply
to the GPL.  The GPL is only about distribution.  

Using a string in a non-GPL program to spawn gpg is just fine unless you
have heavily tweaked gpg to work around the GPL.

FWIW, the technical process of linking is not relevant to check whether
a software is a derived work.  It needs to be decided case by case,
Fortunately there are a couple of pretty solid hints to decide whether
it is a derived work.  See the GPL FAQ for details.


Shalom-Salam,

   Werner

-- 
Die Gedanken sind frei.  Ausnahmen regelt ein Bundesgesetz.




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