RE: AbiWord development & licensing question

Hi David,

First off, I am not a lawyer, so please do not
construe what I write here as binding legal advice.
You'd be wise to seek counsel and thoroughly
understand AbiWord's license, the GPL.

http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/index_html#GNUGPL

> Who do I contact if I have questions regarding
> distribution of an AbiWord
> derivative? I'm interested in using the word
> processor on a potentially
> commercial and "off the shelf" product and would
> like to know what licensing
> restrictions there are.
>
> I understand somewhat the GPL, so I understand that
> means I have to make the
> source openly available. If I were to compile
> AbiWord in to a DLL linked in
> to a greater program...

One of the GPL's requirements are to make the source
freely available (modulo marginal costs of CDs,
bandwidth, whatever your distribution mechanism is) to
whomever you distribute the program to. Most people
just put the source up on their website or include a
link back to the official website, assuming that you
haven't made any changes to the source code.

> 1) Do I have to include the sources as part of the
> distribution, or simply
> make them available *somewhere* for download.

IIRC, you have to post notice that your users are
entitled to the source code. How you get it to them is
your business. See above.

> 2) Does the source code disclosure apply only to the
> AbiWord component, and
> not any applications that may use it?

The GPL has been dubbed a "viral" license by some.
This means that if you were to make a derivitive work
of a GPL'd product, that derivitive work's license
must also be GPL or GPL-compatible. What constitutes a
"derivitive work" is something you should discuss with
a lawyer if it isn't immediately clear that your thing
is or is not derivitive.

Best,
Dom

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Received on Mon Sep 19 18:34:18 2005