Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2000 17:36:04 -0700 From: "Frank Warren" <clovis@home.com> To: "Rahul Siddharthan" <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> Cc: "Jason C. Wells" <jcwells@nwlink.com>, "Postmaster" <webmaster@radikal.net>, <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Copyright and payment Message-ID: <052901bff82b$cffa9010$63770118@lvrmr1.sfba.home.com> References: <Pine.SOL.3.96.1000726232722.7653B-100000@utah> <046f01bff7f5$eb8ae5e0$63770118@lvrmr1.sfba.home.com> <20000728011912.A11069@physics.iisc.ernet.in>
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You must be a fan of Stallman and the FSF. What you say below is untrue. I went to www.gnu.org and looked at their current (and always changing) GPL. From that GPL we see: 3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following: a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or, b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or, c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.) So what I said was correct. Upon demand, one must surrender all source to any third party if one adds code to a GPL source and redistributes. This includes the use of ANY GPL-licensed source, whether or not for profit, and whether or not for commercial use. In short, when GPL code is used with your code, you lose all rights as stated. You are committed, by law, to give up your intellectual property rights, to disclose your inventions and so forth. Note also that the GNU page is arguing against software patents in Europe, which makes the thrust of this organization pretty clear. GNU is what it is, and anyone who wants to go look can see for themselves. The license is paraded about publicly, and it has the express intent of infecting anything bundled with GPL with the GPL license. It admits now, grudgingly, because it would otherwise be overturned, that one is entitled to keep one's own code and can use and license it as one pleases. You lose this one. The GPL is precisely a virus as claimed, and seeks to wrest from other people their intellectual property rights compared to the FreeBSD license. It does not demand that you redistribute the GNU source but YOUR ORIGINAL SOURCE as well; that is to say, it infects and abrogates your rights to whatever you might add to the software base. What one bundles with any GPL code becomes, necessarily, public domain. And this is why I have nothing to do with FSF, GPL or GNU anything. Even Micro$teal gives one a better deal than that and as I recall, they recently lost an anti-trust case. Thanks for playing. ----- Original Message ----- From: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> To: Frank Warren <clovis@home.com> Cc: Jason C. Wells <jcwells@nwlink.com>; Postmaster <webmaster@radikal.net>; <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Sent: Thursday, July 27, 2000 12:49 PM Subject: Re: Copyright and payment > Frank Warren said on Jul 27, 2000 at 11:10:17: > > There is a great deal of misunderstanding here. FreeBSD does not really > > refer to it being available at no cost. It refers to INTELLECTUAL freedom. > > You can "own" this code if you like, and charge what you like and think is > > apt depending on your value-add. You can take it private. GPL code you > > cannot. You MUST make the source available to everyone no matter what you > > do. You can of course do value-add to GPL code ,and charge for it, but > > there's no point to paying for it as the source must be released on demand. > > I've seen this piece of misinformation so often in FreeBSD lists, I > don't know whether it's worth getting into it yet again. The source > must be released on demand *to someone to whom you have given the > binaries* -- not to just anyone who asks for it. And the distribution > of binaries and source must be under the GPL. In principle one can > think of a situation where you refuse to distribute your program > publicly via an FTP site, but sell it to someone under the GPL. It > may quite likely work for custom written code, if the customer does > not want to redistribute it (Cygnus does that with custom > modifications to gcc, I was told) and it does not conflict with the > GPL at all. Of course, any widely useful software would probably get > redistributed for free somewhere down the line, and perhaps put up on a > ftp site; in practice, most authors distribute it for free themselves. > > > put anything under the GPL. It no longer can belong to you at all. It may > > have been all your new, original code, but once under GPL, it belongs to > > FSF, and you can't get it back. > > You can't get back the modified version which has been "contaminated" > with GPL code under other peoples' copyrights. You can certainly > retain your original unmodified code and do what you like to it. If > you're uncomfortable with that, remember that you're only being > stopped from making proprietary use of someone else's free > contribution to your code. What you wrote is yours, whether > originally under the BSD or the GPL license, and if it stands > by itself and works, nobody can stop you doing what you want with it. > (Unless you donated the copyrights to someone else like the FSF, which > is often done but is not a GPL requirement at all). > > The GPL is not a perfect license, but these flamefests against it are > silly and the amount of misinformation about it that goes on > unchallenged in the FreeBSD lists is just amazing. > > Rahul. 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