Also I think there is this big question wether a GPL DShow filter is considered as a program or as a library.
Program ....
It is "reasonably considered independent and separate work" :-)
There is no way a COM writer can know or predict how and when its component is going to be used. It is 100% dynamic during runtime. In the COM philosophy it should also be considered independent to be flexible and re-usable. That is the whole idea of COM.
For those who are not convinced: look at CORBA. I've been working on CORBVA for a few years before I started working on COM. You have GPL and non-GPL implementations. They operate however together and servers created by GPL cannot see the difference between a client created with a GPL implementation and a client created with a non-GPL version.
Since COM is nothing more than a localised version of DCOM and the latter is sometimes called the Microsoft version of CORBA, the resemblance should be clear.
Still not convinced! :-) See the GPL OpenDivX filter.
In the second case that means you should be able to use it from other projects than GPL (or GPL compatible). For example Windows Media Player is not allowed. But AFAIK you can't deny this access to different programs while the Filter is installed on the computer...
I think in the GPL world a definition should be made once and for all about things like COM, CORBA, etc. Or actually, one should clear out that these things do indeed qualify as a program an not as a library.
Now this topic keeps poping up again and again for no reason.
But to keep back to the subject. I think I'm just going to wait for Rob's reply. And in case he - to my surprise - isn't interested I'm going to put up a SourceForge page or so.
Regards,
Armin