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I am relatively (read: completely) new to software development and releasing software; furthermore, I am confused by the terms of the GPL license.

My question (which may have been answered many times over without my knowledge) is as follows: if I use a GPL-licensed piece of software to modify my code, without actually distributing the GPL-licensed software, am I obliged to make my source code available to the end consumer and/or license my software under the GPL license?

In my case, I am using multiple open-sourced libraries for a Python program; I am also packaging my code into a .exe file with PyInstaller (which is where the problem arises, in my case).

Thank you for your help!

Daniel Shevchenko
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In the spirit of GPL one should be able to replace the GLP'd code with his own and use your system with his piece. In your case that would mean to give them the mean to rebuild the exe.

The viral aspect of GPL also means that code that interact with GPL'd code in this way (as part of an exe) would also automatically be GPL. Exception taken with LGPL which has a library exception. Though in that case the library must be accessible so that a user can replace it with his own (thus remains dynamically linked, or provide the required means to re-link if statically linked).

Note i'm not a laywer, so take with the appropriate consideration.

Newtopian
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