["Graham Bloice" <graham.bloice@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> The impression I have is that an OLE server (Ethereal is presumably
> acting as an OLE server) can either be "in-process", in which case it's
> a DLL and requests from the client to the server are done by loading the
> DLL if it's not already loaded and calling code in the DLL, or
> "out-of-process", in which case it's a separate executable and some
> interprocess message channel is used to convey the request and the
> results.
>
> If it's in-process, that's a form of dynamic linking; I'd say only
> software with a GPL-compatible license could use a GPL'ed in-process
> server.
>
> If it's out-of-process, you could probably argue that the connection
> between the client and server doesn't require that a GPL'ed
> out-of-process server be used only by clients with GPL-compatible
> licenses.

Any in-process COM server can be made out-of-process by a simple regedit.
MS provide a system host specifically for this.  I don't know if they are
using OLE or COM.

Graham Bloice