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I am relatively (read: completely) new to software development and releasing software; furthermore, I am confused by the terms of the GPL license.

My question (which may have been answered many times over without my knowledge) is as follows: if I use a GPL-licensed piece of software to modify my code, without actually distributing the GPL-licensed software, am I obliged to make my source code available to the end consumer and/or license my software under the GPL license?

In my case, I am using multiple open-sourced libraries for a Python program; I am also packaging my code into a .exe file with PyInstaller (which is where the problem arises, in my case).

Thank you for your help!

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  • Unclear what you mean by "modify (your) code". Do you mean you're using gcc to compile your code, or GNU Emacs to edit your code, or a GPL tool to pack up your executable?
    – John R. Strohm
    Commented Aug 3, 2017 at 14:15
  • When I say "modify my code", I mean that I am a) using open-source libraries (e.g. matplotlib, bs4, etc.) and b) I am compiling the software via a GPL-licensed library into a .exe file.
    – Daniel Shevchenko
    Commented Aug 3, 2017 at 14:16

1 Answer 1

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In the spirit of GPL one should be able to replace the GLP'd code with his own and use your system with his piece. In your case that would mean to give them the mean to rebuild the exe.

The viral aspect of GPL also means that code that interact with GPL'd code in this way (as part of an exe) would also automatically be GPL. Exception taken with LGPL which has a library exception. Though in that case the library must be accessible so that a user can replace it with his own (thus remains dynamically linked, or provide the required means to re-link if statically linked).

Note i'm not a laywer, so take with the appropriate consideration.

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  • Thank you for your (very quick :D) help. Mind you, marking the question as a duplicate (sorry about not checking other posts) was helpful.
    – Daniel Shevchenko
    Commented Aug 3, 2017 at 14:23
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    Unless I'm missing something here, this answer is fundamentally incorrect. The OP's question is essentially about code generation; you can use GPL'd software for code generation all you like without triggering the copyleft provision. Were this not the case, using compilers like GCC would require GPL'd licensing of the resulting code.
    – Robert Harvey
    Commented Aug 3, 2017 at 15:12
  • @Rober Harvey : If strictly speaking about using PyInstaller, you are correct but he did specify that he was using multiple open source libraries (I assumed here GPL'd libraries) as well which would make his software GPL regardless of how it has been packaged.
    – Newtopian
    Commented Aug 3, 2017 at 15:19
  • That being said, I should have marked it as duplicate as well rather than actually answer it... that would have been the proper thing to do here
    – Newtopian
    Commented Aug 3, 2017 at 15:20

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