GPL as an evaluation license

[Aviad Mandel]

Hi list,

I know you're not lawyers, but I though you could help me with a GPL issue.

I'm writing a function library in C which I want to sell licenses for,
targeting a specialized industry. To make my entry point better, I plan to
release it under GPL (as opposed to LGPL) so that potential users can
evaluate it properly before making a decision. My target industry is far far
away from FOSS, so I'm pretty sure that they won't release their own code
under GPL in order to adopt mine free (as in beer).

So as long as I make sure I own all copyrights, will this work legally?

Two main questions:

(1) Is GPL giving me the enough protection?
(2) Will GPL allow a company which hasn't bought a non-GPL license enough
freedom to evaluate the library?

What makes this slightly complicated, is what happens when company X decides
to take my library and integrate it into their proprietary software for
evaluation. Even for their internal copies, they can't badge the whole
package as GPL, because they don't necessarily own the rights to all
components, and may not even have all sources.

So let's look at the case where the company has just linked my GPL'ed
library with their proprietary source codes + proprietary libraries for
which the company only has as binaries.

Now person X wants to send a copy of the software's binary (my library
included) to person Y, say over email. Under what conditions is it legal? If
person Y works at the same company? For the same company (outsourcing)? Has
access to everything necessary to build the software, so that person Y could
in theory build the binary from software owned by the company + the library
under GPL?

TIA,
  Aviad
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