Not a lawyer, caveats abound, and all that, but;
Excerpt from GPL's licence FAQ:
*The program dynamically links plug-ins, and they make function calls to
each other and share data structures, we believe they form a single
program, which must be treated as an extension of both the main program and
the plug-ins. This means that combination of the GPL-covered plug-in with
the non-free main program would violate the GPL.*
So, it sounds like either way you're likely to need to release under GPL or
find a different library.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#IfInterpreterIsGPL
On Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 07:36 Richard Frye <richard(a)codingstudios.com> 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?
>
>