Licensing question

All,

I have an application that needs to authenticate users to the Linux
system.  We are having a discussion about whether using Linux-PAM would
require our proprietary application to be released as GPL.  A couple of
us believe that the Linux-PAM is GPL, not LGPL, and thus any application
that would link to it, either dynamically or statically, would
constitute a derived work.

If you could provide clarification about the licensing of the Linux-PAM,
I would be grateful.  The following questions need to be addressed:

1) Does statically linking to the GPL code Linux-PAM constitute a
derived work.

2) If we use Linux-PAM dynamically linked, though this is a minuscule
portion of our code -- not the main objective of the code, does our
code then become a derived work?

3) If we use Linux-PAM, but we only do dlopen() to connect to the
dynamic Linux-PAM library does our code then become a derived work?

Also note:  I understand that you are not a lawyer, but I'm asking for
your opinion as the developers of the Linux-PAM.

If you have the time, or an opinion on the matter, please chime in.

Thanks,
Andy