What exactly the license of rubyscript2exe ?

Question

It says that rubyscript2exe license is GPL, but I can't understand the following: If I create an executable with it, may I use the application I created in my company without contribute it to the GNU society (without sharing my Ruby code?)

Can I even include it in our product and sell my executable as a part of our product?

Here is the link: http://www.erikveen.dds.nl/rubyscript2exe/#5.1.0

Thanks!

Answer 1

may I use the application I created in my company without contribute it to the GNU society (without sharing my Ruby code?)

Yes! The GPL license gouverns only how you use the GPL'ed source code, not the data that you use it with. So, if you were to write an extension to the original program, or modified its source, you would be obliged to publish that modification. But the GPL never obliges you to observe any rules concerning your data that are used/produced by the program under GPL.

In your case, this data happens to be code as well – but for the purpose of the GPL, it is just any old data.

Answer 2

You can use whatever license; the RubyScript2Exe specifically states that here. At any rate, the GPL only covers RubyScript2Exe itself, not the applications produced by it.