[mythtv] License

[Robert Swain]

On 2/4/09 13:09, David Watkins wrote:
> 2009/4/2 Myth TV<mythtvmythtv at gmail.com>:
>> Well....it matters if you are planning to develop a commercial STB, and you
>> dont't want your competitors to take any advantage from your work or your
>> ideas. That's the reason why I start this thread, we want to do things
>> right, we know and understand what opensource movement represents and we
>> want to respect GPL licenses. But would prefer not to release our changes
>> source code because of what I've said before and we were wondering if
>> there's any way to achieve it.
>
> I may be missing the point here but, provided you GPL the mythtv
> source code, then you can't you apply whatever restrictions you like
> on your own stuff?
>
> There's any nuumber of products that use GPL Linux with GPL
> applications but still contain propriertary code.  For example my
> Reciva radio runs GPL Linux, and GPL UPNP and Web servers, but also
> contains a licensed Realmedia player and other non open-source
> applications.
>
> I imagine your problems come if you want modify existing mythtv code,
> rather than supplement it.

As I understand it, MythTV is licensed under the GNU GPL version 2.

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html

Read through it and all should become clear about what you can and 
cannot do.

For example, you can run a proprietary, closed-source program that is 
disjoint from a GPL program within the same system without having 
license issues.

As far as I am aware, you can call a GPL executable binary from a 
proprietary program without license issues too.

You cannot link to any GPL libraries or GPL binary objects from 
proprietary code without the need to relicense the resulting binary as 
GPL and make available all source code used to create the resulting 
binary. At least that's what the FSF interpretation is supposed to be I 
think.

Regards,
Rob