Re: GPL & Subclassing

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

On Wednesday, June 12, 2002, at 01:58 PM, Dennis Leeuw wrote:

> I think you can't. As soon as you incorporate GPLed code you should 
> release
> your code as GPL.
>
> Dennis
>
> Jason Harris wrote:
>
> > Hello,
> >
> > I apologize if this has been asked before.  I'd like to include a 
> > single
> > file from your implementation of AppKit in a Cocoa project (modified, 
> > of
> > course, to work with the Cocoa headers and without a gnustep library
> > around).  I'd like to subclass this file to add functionality.  My 
> > project
> > is closed source.
> >
> > Can I do this without violating the terms of the GPL?  I'm currently 
> > rolling
> > my own implementation and I'd like to avoid reinventing the wheel if
> > possible.
> >
> > Thanks for the help!
> >
> > Jason


Yes ... GNUstep is LGPL rather than GPL ... which means you can link 
with it and
use it without having to release your source, but if you actually want 
to take
fragments of the code and incorporate it into your product directly 
rather than
linking with it, you must release your source code when you distribute 
your
product.