GPL

[Stefan.Neis at t-online.de]

Velikanov schrieb:
> 
> I build a billing system based on FREERADIUS+ORACLE and
> want to install  it   for some of   ISP. 
> But I give them FREERADIUS with source, as is as on 
> www.freeradius.org.
> 
> Is this GPL violation ??

IANAL, but  I think the critical part probably is section 2.b) of the
GPL:

>    b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that
in
>    whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any
>    part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third
>    parties under the terms of this License.

i.e. if you "integrate" Oracle you must  distribute FreeRADIUS+Oracle
under GPL, which you obviously can't. Now the interesting question
is if you're really integrating Oracle tightly enough to trigger that
para-
graph. An example where it _does_ cause problems is OpenSSL (you
can't distribute OpenSSL under the GPL, so e.g. Debian does take
all the SLL related stuff  out of the binaries they distribute). 
OTOH, giving FreeRadius the ability to use Oracle by means of a
standard SQL interface IMHO doesn't cause you a problem and
distributing two separate programs with separate licences that happen
to be configured to interact shouldn't be a problem - IMVHO.
However, if you link against Oracle client libraries to be able to use
all of Oracles potential, that might cause a problem.

         Regards,
                       Stefan

P.S.: I suppose if I'm missing some other relevant paragraph,
            somebody will be telling me ... ;-)