My plugin dll depends on the presence of Microsoft Excel on a client computer. Excel is not part of the OS. The dependency is a 2 way transfer of data, the dll I created only works if run from inside Excel.
The code of my application is all open source. Other than the dependency on Excel, there is a dependency on another package. There are 2 (3) Scenarios I'm wondering about:
- Scenario 1: If the non-Excel dependency is GPL, then my plugin must be GPL also, meaning I have to distribute source code of all my dependencies (except kernel/operating system stuff) - which I don't have for Excel. Does this mean I cannot reference the GPL package as my project cannot adhere to the license terms?
- Scenario 2: I remove the second dependency and only depend on Excel. I want to make my plugin LGPL so other people can build it into their code. Again, can I choose to make my code LGPL if it depends on something closed source; how could someone who derives a new plugin from my one (inheriting the LGPL license) disclose the full source of their transitive dependency to Excel?
- Scenario 2b: I depend on Excel + derived code from an LGPL library, forcing me to inherit LGPL or GPL. I choose LGPL but can I adhere to that without Excel source code? Is this back to Scenario 1?
My end goal; license the plugin with a weak copyleft license like LGPLv3 or Mozilla License 2.0. Ideally allow me to derive code from another weak copyleft starting point (I have been gifted some code under GPL I may be able to negotiate it to LGPL)
