On Wed, Oct 23, 2013 at 10:17 AM, Charlie Brady
<[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Oct 23, 2013 at 5:35 AM, Gordon Rowell <[email protected]>
>> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Has anyone actually owned the community version of e-smith/SME? When
>> >> Mitel bought e-smith, I bet they were mainly buying the people,
>> >> intangibles,
>> >> and marketing engine of e-smith. Most all of the code was/is GPL.
>> >
>> > The GPL is a license under which code is released by the copyright holder.
>>
>> The GPL explicitly states that anyone can modify and redistribute
>> copies as long as the license terms are maintained. So it is odds
>> with the normal concepts of ownership.
>
> No, it is orthogonal to ownership.
Technically true, but in practice it means that non-owners have the
same rights as owners except in rare circumstances. So it makes
ownership meaningless.
> The GPL doesn't change ownership at
> all. It is a license, given to non-owners, which allows them to distribute
> the work (unmodified, or modified). The ownership stays with those who
> create the work (or pay to have the work created as work-for-hire).
But they can't reduce the rights the existing licence gives everyone
else to do the same. And they can't change the license even for
future additions unless the copyright holders of all components of the
'work as a whole' (however that would be interpreted for something
like this) agree.
> The ownership (i.e. copyright) of SME server software is distributed among
> many parties. The majority of the SME server specific code is copyright
> Mitel; either produced by them, or purchased from e-smith, inc.
Which makes a change from GPL difficult/unlikely. And you can't
really overlook the fact that the bulk of the included code comes from
another Linux distribution whose redistribution terms make things like
SME possible - and whose ongoing updates constitute much of the value.
However, there is always the option to include trademarked names or
non-GPL components with restrictions that make redistribution more
difficult.
--
Les Mikesell
[email protected]
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