License issues

[Alex Larsson]

On Thu, 24 May 2001, Jeremy Allison wrote:

> Alex Larsson wrote:
> >
> > There are (in my mind) two kinds of possibilities for violation here:
> > a) an app might use the gnome-vfs api to access files in general,
> > which suddenly means that the app also can read files from smb
> > shares.
> > b) An app depends on the existence of the smb module for it's core
> > functionality.
> >
> > I would personally see the first case as ok since it just uses a
> > public LGPL API in a general way, but the second I think is a
> > violation of the license. But if the app and the library are
> > distributed separately, who violates the license? The user? But the
> > GPL only covers distribution, not usage.
>
> I think the first case is ok, as it's the user that's doing the
> aggregation. A proprietary app that depended upon libsmb.so for
> it's functionality would probably not be ok (IMHO).

But is it ok to you that I distribute this GPL module? It can potentially
be used to violate the samba license. (Of course, people may violate it
without my module too...)

/ Alex