[Help-smalltalk] Re: license issue(s)

[Paolo Bonzini]

>  As I understand it, any code using vmProxy should be GPLed.

Yes.  So, to recap:

1) Smalltalk programs need not be GPL.  This is even stated explicitly 
in the exception.

2) Clients of the virtual machine (i.e. programs that embed it, linking 
to libgst.a or otherwise getting the vmProxy) need to be GPL.

3) Bindings are a special case of (2), where you apply the same 
exception that will be soon applied to the VM.


> What if I want to use GNU Smalltalk as an extension language for my
> (non GPLed) app? Is it enough to provide just the source for the glue
> code ?

You can, for sure, if you do not need glue code.  In this case, the 
Smalltalk program can load the code of the application as a shared 
library and start the application from there.  There is no need to link 
the application to the virtual machine.

If you do this with some glue code (so your application does not link to 
the VM directly, it's the bindings that link to *both* your application 
and the VM -- and you are the author of both bindings and applications, 
so you can license them as you wish; see also 
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLIncompatibleLibs), it may be 
possible; but IANAL, and this is surely a gray area.

However, this is against the very reason why the GNU Smalltalk virtual 
machine is GPL: because the embeddability of the virtual machine is one 
of the few aspects that distinguishes gst from proprietary 
implementations.  In fact I would consider the first case a loophole: a 
perfectly acceptable one, but still a loophole.

Paolo