[João Valverde <j@xxxxxx>]

Hi,

The GPL never allowed for that, as far as I know. See:

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#IfLibraryIsGPL

In this case Wireshark is a library for plug-ins.

What you can do is not distribute the (private-use) plug-in, and 
therefore you do not have a requirement to make the source available. 
You cannot use a GPL-incompatible license to link to Wireshark, i.e load 
a plug-in. That is a violation of the license terms.

Note that the GPL terms apply to the whole combined work, even though 
the plug-in may be using some other (GPL-compatible) FOSS license.

So it was already not allowed and that is not a change in policy.

Regards,

João

On 04/12/23 06:30, Anders Broman wrote:
> Hi,
> Does this mean that we are no longer allowing private closed source 
> plug-ins not distributed outside of companies?
>
> If so isn't that a rather big change of policy?
>
> Best regards
> Anders
>
> Den mån 4 dec. 2023 00:26João Valverde <j@xxxxxx> skrev:
>
>     Hi,
>
>     There are some changes in progress to the plugin registration API
>     that
>     break compatibility and require manual intervention from plugin
>     authors
>     maintaining plugins out-of-tree. These changes are rather minor and
>     concern only plugin registration, not other APIs accessible to
>     plugins.
>
>     See MR 13524:
>     https://gitlab.com/wireshark/wireshark/-/merge_requests/13524
>
>     Changes required are rewriting the registration code (very easy to do
>     [1]) and declare (using a C enum) that the plugin is released either
>     under GPLv2 or later, or a GPLv2 compatible license. The other
>     changes
>     to the ABI version number are currently not relevant to plugin
>     authors
>     (no policy change is implied), it just uses less boilerplate with
>     macros.
>
>     This should improve the plug-in experience for both developers and
>     users
>     and may improve compatibility in the future.
>
>     Comments welcome.
>
>     Regards,
>
>     João
>
>     [1]https://gitlab.com/wireshark/wireshark/-/commit/90b16b40921b737aadf9186685d866fd80e37ee6#4a1fe9011e8240918e5fc6230c0bcd2e4d3b9c34
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