Alexander Göbel wrote:
Dear Wireshark developers,
As a university student I just started working for an IT-engineering
chair. They are working on a software they plan to sell commercially.
I've read the GNU GPL and your FAQ as well but I still don't feel
competent enough to judge my situation here:
Would it be possible to include a view of Wireshark in one tab of this
program? Wireshark would be installed and run seperately of our program,
but our program would start Wireshark and display it as a new tab within
the program.
I think this can be considered to be "at arm's length", but I'm not
really sure.
What about just using a .dll in propietary software? The FAQ said that
would probably be a bad approach.
Nothing of this has been realized yet, it's just in our minds so far.
Personally I love the idea of free software, but for this project my
hands are tied.
Thank you for your efforts!
Best wishes
Alexander
Hi Alexander,
As the text says "at arm's length", which means something like communicating
with Wireshark through the channels provided by the underlying OS (like pipes or
even files) is oke. Incorporating compiled code and use it's external
interfaces, like including a DLL does make the GNU GPL applicable to your software.
If you can channel the Wireshark screen output through an OS mechanism into a
view in your application that probably doesn't make the GNU GPL apply to your
software.
So far I haven't seen such integration of an GPL'ed application in another
program, so I might have missed something.
Thanx,
Jaap
