Richard Stallman Answer:
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
> Can I use libraries with GPL licenses on commercial apps without open source?I do not want to talk about "open source" since that is the slogan of
people who disagree fundamentally with me and with the free software
movement. Let's talk about "free" and "nonfree".
See
http://gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html
for more explanation of the difference between free software and open
source. See also
http://thebaffler.com/past/the_meme_hustler for
Evgeny Morozov's article on the same point.
A program is free if it comes with source code and gives the users
the four essential freedoms. See
http://gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html.
Whether the program is commercial (from a business) or not
is a side issue that we think is not important.
If you include some GPL-covered code in a program, then legally
you must distribute the whole program under the GPL. Which means,
in particular, you must distribute the _whole_ program as free software.
That's the purpose of the GPL!
See
http://gnu.org/licenses.