On Wednesday 14 July 2004 01:47, Dominic Reynolds wrote:

I was wondering if you could clarify something for me. I'm developing a YaST UI for a commercial product that includes ycp files for the ui and perl SCR agents (that use the ycp.pm api). SuSE has GPL'd the YaST toolkit but software that utilizes the toolkit is not considered derived correct? (meaning if I write these modules then I am _not_ obligated to release them if my employer doesn't wish to).

Sorry if this seems an obvious question but I can't find any licensing information in the Perl files or Yast code (other than in the RPM to say it's all released under the GPL).

I am not a lawyer, and I am sure you know that if you ask three lawyers the same question you'll end up with about seven completely different answers... ;-) I don't know for sure. The FSF has a FAQ available that covers this issue, but this also leaves room for interpretation: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#IfInterpreterIsGPL Even if you would choose the safe way and ask the holder of intellectual property (which by now is Novell) for formal permission, there would still be the question how to handle Qt - which would then be another case of GPL'ed software. Qt would most likely be a case of what that FAQ calls "bindings" - the YaST2 Qt UI does little more than map its own pushbutton to a QPushButton. Please ask a real lawyer. I can only point to what others think about it, which in no way is legally relevant in a court of law. CU -- Stefan Hundhammer <sh@suse.de> Penguin by conviction. YaST2 Development SuSE Linux AG Nuernberg, Germany