Hacker News Reader

Sorry but what does "arms length" mean? My software doesn't have arms. Using metaphors full of imagery is cute but essentially meaningless.

> Two programs communicating over a socket aren't incorporated. They're two programs.

Aren't they? So, if I want to use a GPL library, all I need to do is write a little wrapper program that does RPC over a socket, and boom, I can use a GPL library in my closed source program? Obviously not.

View on HN

> Aren't they? So, if I want to use a GPL library, all I need to do is write a little wrapper program that does RPC over a socket, and boom, I can use a GPL library in my closed source program?

Yep. This is how MySQL/MariaDB work, for example.

What about when running a wasm component in an AGPL host? Can the compiled wasm file be proprietary? They share the same memory space, but the wasm component is not compiled with the host.

Interesting; this sounds to me like linking, but I'd email licensing@fsf.org to be sure.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com