On: Android now forces apps to include proprietary code for push notifications

[striking]

Your code is no longer completely FOSS when you do that. It depends on a binary blob that you can't see into.

[pfortuny → striking]

Yes, yes, but I guess BSD-licence-using developers do not care too much about it.

[dwaite → striking]

You absolutely can do this - this is how the Nvidia shim driver works after all.

What you can't do is write code which depends on GPL, then distribute it with those GPL components and insist the resulting package is not GPL.

In fact, it's not so much 'dependent than derivative. GPL is a copyright license, and copyright restrictions can only only flow to derivative works.

[astazangasta → striking]

Dependencies are different than source code. You can write FOSS that runs on Windows, which is a dependency and not FOSS.

[bscphil → astazangasta]

As long as it doesn't require linking to a proprietary Windows library to interface with the NT api. That would violate at least the GPL 2. Though you could do it yourself, and release your own code as GPL (and the combined work as proprietary), no one else could distribute the full work under the GPL because of the incompatibility.

[richardwhiuk → bscphil]

You can ship so long as it's not statically linked.