Plug-ins
Adding a plug-ins interface to a free software project can carry the risk that others will develop non-free plug-ins, thus reducing the free software project to a platform for a non-free application. This can be avoided by taking care as described in the GNU Coding Standards:
First, the general plug-in architecture design should closely tie the plug-in to the original code, such that the plug-in and the base program are parts of one extended program. (...) Second, you should require plug-in developers to affirm that their plug-ins are released under an appropriate license. This should be enforced with a simple programmatic check. (...) If a case about this got to court, we can point to that symbol as evidence that the plug-in developer understood that the license had this requirement.[1]
GCC example
GCC has had a plug-in interface since 2009.
Status as of 2014
Work is in progress to further extend the plug-in interface.
In January 2014, Richard Stallman commented: "making available the symbol table (identifiers and their types) would not cause this problem [of proprietary plug-ins]. It just needs someone to write the code."[2]
External links
- Standards for Dynamic Plug-in Interfaces, from the GNU Coding Standards
- Plugins section of GCC Internals manual
