The GPL was designed in the age of static linking and before
object orientation (read: linking to foreign code via names
instead of addresses) became popular.
Dynamic linking, which is just like loading, which is allowed by
the GPL or no GPL program would ever run on propietary OSes,
does not fit well into the model of the GPL.
Making two pieces of software work together as an integral
system via message passing does not fit into the GPL model at
all. That was why the GPL failed to infect the entire Beos. Now,
just think of a Qt server communicating with a KDE app or Kimp
by message passing or a Qt being part of the X server, an X
extension. The GPL does not handle this at all.
Via object orientation you can build upon GPLed work without
modifying the GPL source at all. Your classes simply inherit and
overwrite the GPL base classes, but this is different source and
the GPL source is left absolutely intact and unmodified - you
only refer to it by name. The clearly is a violation of the
spirit of the GPL, but the GPL does not handle this at all.
The GPL is about 5 to 8 years behind the current design in
operating systems and applications and does not cope well with
common situations encountered in modern environments.
Kristian
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