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NiryoRobotics / niryo_one_ros

Niryo One ROS stack
GNU General Public License v3.0
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Cannot legally link against GPL code #39

Closed biro-mark closed 4 years ago

biro-mark commented 4 years ago

I'm writing proprietary code which wants to interface with the niryo arm. However, it's unclear whether I'm allowed to link against the driver in this codebase because it's GPL licensed (see text https://github.com/NiryoRobotics/niryo_one_ros/commit/0b7114bfd9cdda020ee537f7338505c29fb0ecfe#diff-9879d6db96fd29134fc802214163b95aR669). Would you consider relicensing the driver code under a more permissive license (LGPL) or add a linking exception?

Wasta-Geek commented 4 years ago
  1. If you code is licensed under proprietary license (that mean, in general, users can use it but do not modify/distribute it) then no, you cannot legally link against this GPL code because your license break the rules of the GPLv3 license.
  2. If under open source license, you would have to license under a GPLv3 compatible license to use this project in your code (I don't have much knowledge about it, but GPLv3 license is compatible with itself for example if I'm right) and to respect the rules of the GPLv3 license for our project (making available source code, notes of modification compared to the original, ...) .

These is a FAQ available here if you want about the GPL license.

For your asking, it would not be possible to modify our license to the LGPL license. And to add a linking exception, I do not have the responsibility/knowledge to give you a yes/no answer but I doubt it would be possible.

If you have further questions, please send a mail to contact@niryo.com

These are ONLY advices / thinking, it may contains errors; I do not have enough knowledges myself about licenses and your project to give you a 100% accurate answer, only a lawyer could give you that answer.