Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2000 04:29:39 +0530 (IST) From: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> To: Arun Sharma <adsharma@sharmas.dhs.org> Cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: On "intelligent people" and "dangers to BSD" Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.20.0003190415120.14850-100000@theory7.physics.iisc.ernet.in> In-Reply-To: <20000318133103.A18560@sharmas.dhs.org>
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> > > I have been in this situation before with one of my previous > > > employers. When the Indian software firm A modifies GPL'ed code > > > and ships it off to company B, GPL triggers. You can have private > > > modifications to GPL, only if the code remains within a legal entity. > > > > It would trigger only if company B plans to redistribute. That > > is, Company A must give it to Company B under the GPL; but if it > > is for company B's private use, why would company B care about > > the restrictions on distributing? > > The transfer of code from Company A to Company B is considered redistribution. > Otherwise, one can defeat GPL by having agreements with Companies B1, B2, > B3 etc, selling code for private use only. Thus when Company A transfers > code to company B, it is required to give it to anyone who asks for it. > That's the interpretation I heard from the lawyers. Dunno about lawyers but the GPL nowhere insists that you must redistribute -- only that if you do so, it must be under the GPL. Company A has to give it to Company B under the GPL, yes. That means Company B can redistribute under the GPL if they choose to. They may choose not to. Meanwhile, no third party can demand the code from Company A. Company B can demand the source code if they received only the binaries, but that's about the extent of what they can demand; having received the stuff, B must handle it under the GPL, and A is no longer in the picture. If the code is of some general interest, what can certainly happen is that Company B redistributes it further (or even puts it up on their ftp site): there's no way A can stop that. That's why RMS's distinction between "free speech" and "free beer" is something of a red herring: any GPL program which is useful to more than a few people is likely to end up on some ftp site (free beer). But neither A nor B nor anyone else is required to give it to anyone who asks, and I suspect a lot of the GPL-hatred in the BSD world is based on exactly this sort of misunderstanding. > I'm not sure that Linus Torvalds can change his mind now and release > a version of Mobile Linux using a commercial license. He does not own the > copyrights to everything - just to his code. > > My understanding of GPL is that Peter could not have sold a version of > ghostscript containing a GPL'ed add-on without the permission of the > author. This is why SCSL is not so well received in the open source > circles - because it allows the copyright holder - Sun, to have > special privileges. You're quite right -- Torvalds can't do that (and probably wouldn't try). As for ghostscript, I'm not sure right now whether the Aladdin licence existed from the beginning or the first version of Ghostscript was GPL'd: but definitely in recent years Deutsch has been developing ghostscript (with user contributions) under terms somewhat more restrictive than the GPL, and releasing old versions periodically under the GPL. I don't know who has the copyrights for the user contributions, though. More recently, Hans Reiser makes it clear that he plans to dual-license ReiserFS in some way, GPL for linux and commercial licence for commercial vendors who may be interested, I think he too plans to control the copyrights to all contributions in some way. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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