[Mageia-dev] GPL-compatibility Question: Distributing Binaries of GPLed Programs Which Link Against Non-Free Code

Fri Nov 9 18:23:41 CET 2012

Dear Sir or Madam,
+
+I am writing you this letter on behalf of Mageia ( https://www.mageia.org/en/
+), which is a community-developed, operating system, based on the
+GNU/Linux system and with a free-and-open-source (FOSS) core. We would like to
+ask whether (and how) we can distribute pre-built packages of a GPLed program
+(in our case, the video editor cinelerra) after it was linked to a library
+with some proprietary and non-GPLed code (in our case, faac).
+
+The longer story is that there has been some demand for including faac
+( http://sourceforge.net/projects/faac/ - the Freeware Advance Audio Coder),
+which is both non-free in part and patent encumbered, in our distribution,
+and to prepare versions of the appropriate packages for which it is an
+optional dependency. These packages, such as cinelerra (
+http://cinelerra.org/ - a video editor), are licenced under
+the GPL, which restricts which code its distributed binaries may be legally
+linked to.
+
+So our question is: assuming we package faac as a package, can we still
+provide pre-made and binary packages of GPLed programs that use it?
+Furthermore, would this require receiving an explicit permission from the
+copyright owner of the program under the GPL?
+
+We would appreciate any advice that you can give to us on the matter.
+
+Sincerely yours,
+
+— Shlomi Fish, on behalf of the Mageia development team.
+
+
+-- 
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