[sane-devel] Please give me some help to solve the license issues in using sane

[Johannes Meixner]

Hello,

On Jun 6 16:40 Alessandro Zummo wrote (shortened):
> http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#FSWithNFLibs

As far as I see, it seems to be allowed from the legal point
of view to have free software that uses non-free libraries
because they only say that the program won't be fully usable
or not usable at all in a free environment but they don't
say it violates the GPL.

But what does "If it depends on a non-free library to run at all,
it cannot be part of a free operating system such as GNU" mean?

Is "cannot be part of GNU" meant as a license violation or
just that it cannot be included in a "free operating system"
simply because it is useless?

But why can't there be a program in a "free operating system"
which requires a proprietary library which checks if the
library file is there before it dlopens it and if the library
file is not installed, it shows a message where to get it
(e.g. where to download it - or perhaps it even runs a
download user GUI with appropriate license information).

For example a GPL media player which supports only a
proprietary media format. Such a program would be even useful
without the proprietary library installed because it would show
the user a message where to get the missing part.
Of course the proprietary library might be not available
for all hardware architectures but this does not mean
that such a GPL media player is useless in any case.
Of course all proprietary media formats and all proprietary
device communication protocols are against the intention
of a "Free World" but this does not mean that programs
for such formats/protocols are useless.

They even say:
---------------------------------------------------------------
If the program is already written using the non-free library,
perhaps it is too late to change the decision. You may as well
release the program as it stands, rather than not release it. 
---------------------------------------------------------------
This seems to indicate that free software that uses non-free
libraries is in compliance with the GPL from the legal point
of view.

Of course this is only what I perceive right now from what
I read there and of course I am not a lawyer!


Kind Regards
Johannes Meixner
-- 
SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, Maxfeldstrasse 5, 90409 Nuernberg, Germany
AG Nuernberg, HRB 16746, GF: Markus Rex