Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2001 16:53:12 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: trevor@jpj.net (Trevor Johnson) Cc: tlambert@primenet.com (Terry Lambert), brett@lariat.org (Brett Glass), freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Stallman now claims authorship of Linux Message-ID: <200104191653.JAA03074@usr08.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <20010419065023.A5664-100000@blues.jpj.net> from "Trevor Johnson" at Apr 19, 2001 07:14:26 AM
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
> > > Are you saying that hiring someone to make changes to a GPL'd program > > > would violate this second provision? > > > > No. He's saying that the intellectual property involved in a 40 > > line change that results from 3 years of research should be able > > to result in sufficient revenue to pay for that research. > > > > In orther words, brilliant ideas and hard intellectual effort > > should be rewarded. > > The original program must have been brilliantly written, if it was worth > spending so much time on the improvements. If the only way to get revenue > from it is by selling binary copies and keeping the source secret, then > the GPL would be an impediment. Perhaps the original author would be > willing to offer you the program under some other conditions, perhaps in > exchange for a share of the rewards. Wouldn't that be fair? Except that he can't, since those 40 lines are a change to SQUID, which is under the GPL, and if he offers them at all, he has to offer the source code. That's really the point: under the GPL, there's no way to amortize R&D costs on brilliant additions resulting in derivative works. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200104191653.JAA03074>