[sword-devel] Still more about licencing

[Ka-shu Wong]

On Wed, Dec 10, 2003 at 03:06:19PM -0700, Lynn Allan wrote:
> Live several others on this list, I am a freeware developer trying to
> participate in The SWORD Project's software development. When I first
> encountered this licensing issue, I hunted around the gnu website quite a
> while to learn more. I made several visits to the link noted above, and each
> time hoped there was an "EasyEnglish" version :-)

I'll take my chances and try to explain it as simply as I can:

Let A denote the stuff you write, and B the Sword libraries.

You can release A as freeware, or under any license you want.

To get a working program, you'll need A+B.  A+B must be distributed
under the GPL.

Distributing A+B as GPL does not prevent you from distributing A as
freeware - you can do both at the same time.

The catch is that a compiled binary is A+B, you cannot get a compiled
binary with just A.

HTH :)

#include <standard-ianal-disclaimer.h>

- KS