[Discuss-gnuradio] GNURadio and GPL licensing issues

[Eric Blossom]

Posted on behalf of Richard Stallmam.

Eric

----------------------------------------------------------------

From: Richard Stallman <address@hidden>
To: Krzysztof Kamieniecki <address@hidden>
cc: address@hidden
Subject: Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] GNURadio and GPL licensing issues
Reply-to: address@hidden
Message-Id: <address@hidden>
Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 09:07:37 -0500

    I've been wondering if GNURadio (which is licensed under GPL) can be
    "integrated" with proprietary
    code and distributed, for some value of "integrated".

The GNU GPL says that if you integrate the code into some larger
program, the larger program, if and when it is distributed, must be
distributed under the terms of the GNU GPL.

If you have specific question in a real situation about what the GPL
requires, please write to address@hidden  The people who answer
are overloaded, so please don't send hypothetical or theoretical
questions.

    I think this is something that may have to be clarified for
    researchers at universities, at least those with "intellectual
    property" offices. This may also be of interest to companies that
    need a relatively disconnected front end for signal processing,
    and may want to invest their signal processing developer resources
    in an open source project.

GNU Radio was not intended as an "open source" program; it is part of
the Free Software Movement.  The idea of the Free Software Movement is
that software should be free and that non-free software is unethical.
So we do not want to encourage non-free software that uses GNU Radio.
If it's not free, we don't think of it as a contribution to society.