> .."protection under the GPL", depends on a willingness on the > part of the copyright owners to actually exercise their rights > under copyright law to defend or enforce their copyrights.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I can't see how willingness to exercise copyright under GPL would require moving to a different license. >From the GPL page: "Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for them if you wish)... "Developers that use the GNU GPL protect your rights with two steps: (1) assert copyright on the software, and (2) offer you this License giving you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify it." "For both users' and authors' sake, the GPL requires that modified versions be marked as changed, so that their problems will not be attributed erroneously to authors of previous versions." As far as I can see, 'Flightgear developers' do assert copyright and then release their (copyrighted) work under GPL. >From there, the software gets possibly modified, clearly relabeled and denoted as a fork of Flightgear and sold by 'FlightProSim' with the claim that you're paying for support and goodies not in Flightgear and that you can get the source code. If that's true, then for all I can see that is not a violation of GPL - GPL allows charging for someone else's work with or without modification. The possible violation of GPL are about redistribution "For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must pass on to the recipients the same freedoms that you received. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights." So I don't think it's the case that packaging Flightgear and selling it is a problem, a scam or illegal (moral issues left aside), and it actually shouldn't be called that. The possible issue is if FlightProSim clearly informs users about GPL freedom or not. It does inform users that it's derived from Flightgear though. Would you really be content with FlightProSim putting a link to Flightgear and a small GPL notice on the page - which would make everything GPL-compliant? Or is the real issue and the reason for the outrage FPS causes that some people are not happy with the GPL concept itself? You may feel that it's morally wrong that someone else makes money of your own work. I actually don't - if I wanted to make money, I would work on something different - that's entirely my choice. I feel that the benefit of giving to 100 people freedom to do something by far outweighs the one using that freedom for something I don't like so much. And you have to remember that freedom isn't worth anything if it can't be misused - then it was only the illusion of freedom. And that seems to me what GPL is about - freedom, not controlling that everyone uses your stuff as you see fit. Not that I have too much to say, but I wouldn't change the license for just some petty revenge against the person running FlightProSim... Cheers, * Thorsten ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ EditLive Enterprise is the world's most technically advanced content authoring tool. Experience the power of Track Changes, Inline Image Editing and ensure content is compliant with Accessibility Checking. http://p.sf.net/sfu/ephox-dev2dev _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
