[Openal-devel] Compilation error

[Chris]

On Friday 09 June 2006 06:32, Prakash Punnoor wrote:
> Sorry, this is not allowed either. You provide means to load GPL libs and
> the hooks are just there for this specific task.

I don't see how loading an external library via dlopen can be a problem. No 
GPL code would be distributed with OpenAL, and there's no way to know ahead 
of time that the library loaded contains GPL code. A library's API/ABI is not 
covered under its license. Someone can come along and make an API/ABI 
compatible lib completely free of GPL code.

See Wine as an example; they put in mechanisms to load copyrighted, closed 
source, Windows DLLs. But they don't provide any themselves, instead offering 
open, free, (buggy, lesser functional,) alternatives to load instead, but you 
can still have it load those non-free DLLs by simply having them. Similarly, 
OpenAL would still work just fine without the GPL lib, just with reduced 
functionality. If the user wants to install the lib themself, it becomes 
their responsiblity to make sure everything's being complied with.