Date: Wed, 05 May 1999 08:45:17 +0900 From: "Daniel C. Sobral" <dcs@newsguy.com> To: John Baldwin <jobaldwi@vt.edu> Cc: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in>, Kris Kennaway <kkennawa@physics.adelaide.edu.au>, advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG, Jeroen Ruigrok/Asmodai <asmodai@wxs.nl>, Laurence Berland <stuyman@confusion.net> Subject: Re: Some thoughts on advocacy (was: Slashdot ftp.cdrom.com upgra Message-ID: <372F868D.D6F66EEE@newsguy.com> References: <XFMail.990502180056.jobaldwi@vt.edu>
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John Baldwin wrote: > > Actually, (someone correct me if I'm wrong), but if you release version 1.0 > under GPL, and use any of the 1.0 code in version 2.0 that you try to sell w/o > the source, then anyone can sue you for the source code to version 2.0 because > it would be a derivative of 1.0 and by the GPL that means the source to 2.0 > would have to be GPL'd and thus freely available, which prevents you from > selling it, for all intents and purposes. It gets much worse when you have a > large propietary product, such as your own OS specific to your application, > and you want to add drivers for a newer network card. You wouldn't be able to > use GPL'd code because you would screw yourself. You'd have to release the > source code to your propietary OS, which your competitors would gladly take > from you and sink you. OTOH, such a company can safely use BSL'd code without > worrying about having to release the source to their competitors. And let's > face it, not all software is going to be free, we do have to eat somehow. So > we can't kill all possibility of selling software. That is not true. The copyright owner can release the software in as many possible and conflicting licenses as he wants. -- Daniel C. Sobral (8-DCS) dcs@newsguy.com dcs@freebsd.org "Proof of Trotsky's farsightedness if that _none_ of his predictions have come true yet." To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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