iLBC license issue

[Daniel Pocock]

Jérôme Warnier wrote:

>Le mercredi 22 mars 2006 à 16:37 +0100, Lionel Elie Mamane a écrit :
>[..]
>  
>
>>But as far as I understand things, the spirit of the GPL is "GPLed
>>code shall not be distributed linked to or meant to be linked to
>>non-free code and no non-free code shall be distributed meant to link
>>with GPLed code". That spirit might not always be legally enforceable,
>>but that's another point.
>>    
>>
>My understanding is that when you link, you have to reproduce a part of
>the source headers of the code to which you link ("#include ..." for
>example).
>And because you cannot introduce GPL code in a non-GPL-compatible
>program, and cannot introduce non-GPL-compatible code in a GPL-licensed
>program, you can't do it either way.
>
>  
>

That is all well and good, but what about GPL code linking to a free 
API, and non-GPL code linking to the same free API?  If the only purpose 
of the free API was to bypass GPL, then that would be a cause for 
concernt.  But if the API has other purposes - for instance, allowing a 
range of apps to use a common implementation of a codec, then it is 
legitimate.