On Fri, Oct 20, 2006 at 04:53:38PM -0700, CatBus wrote: > In fact this whole thread could be said to be founded on a > misconception. You are allowed to sell GPL software for money. You > are allowed to make a profit from your sales of GPL software. You are > allowed to resell software that someone else has licensed to you under > the GPL for money. You are not obligated to make your source code > available for free to the general public. Etc, etc. Just because > people frequently choose to behave a certain way with GPL software does > not mean that they are legally obligated to do so.
if you release the software in binary format, you are obligated to make the change(s) you made to the GPL software available to the public. even linking to GPL libraries has a viral quality to it (e.g. you can't just make it a kernel module). there wouldn't be a LGPL otherwise. firmware and such can be made into a blob format. you can try and obscure the code, but you're still required to release the code IFF you release the binary. > The motivations for licensing software under the GPL can be varied, but > it's pretty wild speculation to claim that those motivations have been > betrayed when the licensing terms have not been violated--unless you're > talking about your own personal motivations and your own personal > software. And if you feel violated by acts that don't violate the > license, then you should have chosen a better license. unfortunately, if someone larger (IBM, Apple, MSFT, etc) chose to violate the GPL'd software of some tiny project i doubt that project would be able to get enough traction to do anything. the GPL's enforcability is a topic for another mailing list, though. -- bill _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
