I am, too, not a lawyer, but:
The GPL is meant to ensure exactly what you plan to do doesn't happen:
If you distribute a program based on librtlsdr, the person receiving
your software has a right to its source code.
Dynamically linking usually doesn't change that fact; that's
interaction directly between machine code through shared state/memory.
Best regards,
Marcus
On Tue, 2019-04-16 at 07:36 -0400, Richard Frye wrote:
I want to write a program that is for sale without
releasing all of the source code. Some of it is fine but parts are proprietary. Does it
matter if I dynamically link the rtlsdr library?
-Richard
On Mon, Apr 15, 2019, 8:45 PM Greg Troxel <gdt(a)lexort.com> wrote:
> Richard Frye <richard(a)codingstudios.com> writes:
>
> > If I write software that uses the rtlsdr library that is already installed
> > on the computer, does my software also have to be opensource?
>
> IANAL, TINLA.
>
> rtl-sdr and osmo-sdr both appear to be GNU GPLv2.
>
> The standard interpretation is that if you create a derived work by
> writing a program that uses those libraries, then distributing that
> derived work requires permission from the copyright holders of the used
> libraries. And, that permission is only available if you license your
> work under the same license, GPLv2. That is the point of the license.
>
> If you want to write software and not distribute it at all, that's
> another matter, and the standard interpetation is that this is ok.
>
> What are you trying to write, and what are you thinking about for
> licensing, other than GPLv2?
>