From: Caolan McNamara (cmc at domain stardivision.de)
Date: Thu 27 Jul 2000 - 12:12:18 IST
At 12:03 27.07.00 +0100, you wrote:
>This is probably a silly question but...better save than sorry...
>
>Is a programs GPL affected if it makes use of a data file which is
>generated by another program which isn't GPL?
No. Transformation of data by a GPLed program is fully legit even if
that data is not generated by a GPLed program. So you can run source
not itself released under the GPL through gcc, or more realistically
computer generated source from a metalanguage generator not under the
GPL, You can pipe data through gnu cat which was output from commercial
tee. So you're ok.
And for the record if you wanted to make all sorts of secret proprietry
changes to a gnu app you can, just so long as you don't attempt to give
that binary to anyone else without giving them the source under the GPL.
So in the privacy of your own company for internal reasons you can hack
the crap out a GPLed app and keep all your changes in your own grubby hands,
so long as you don't think that you can give the resulting program to someone.
Obscure: There was a little confusion with bison at one stage as *it* outputs
source code, and the output source is part of bison which was under the GPL,
so from a hyper strict perspective it meant any non GPL programs using the
output
of bison in their app were violating the GPL, but there is a special exception
for this case so its not particurly relevent.
C.
Herein are personal opinions, you'd want to be crazed to consider
these official positions of StarOffice/Sun or even vaguely congruent.
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