In a message dated: Thu, 31 May 2001 00:38:29 EDT
[EMAIL PROTECTED] said:
>If you are the sole author of a piece of code it's yours to license
>under whatever terms suit you. You can even offer different licenses
>to different consumers.
>
>Once a particular release has been licensed to at least one consumer
>under the GPL, the code in that release is Free. All of the "viral"
>business applies to downstream developers. There is nothing in the
>license that forces the original author to make subsequent or parallel
>releases Free, provided that no contributions have been accepted from
>outside the owning entity.
Right, but I write some piece of software, say it's 100 sloc, and I
release it under the GPL. If I then add 2 more lines to that first
100, isn't that considered a derivative work, and therefore also
considered free under the GPL?
Sure, I could use that first 100 sloc in something, then only release
compiled binaries under a different license, and maybe no one would
notice (or more likely, no one would care). However, I would expect
that to be covered by the GPL. The fact that I am the original
and maybe sole author of the code seems to be irrelevant. The fact
is, the code *was* released under the GPL, the next generation of
software used code *covered* by the GPL, and therefore, it seems this
release should *also* be covered.
As sole author of the code, I suppose I could say "Okay, no future
release is covered by the GPL!". However, wouldn't that preclude
even me from using the previous code in a non-free way?
Seems that way.
--
Seeya,
Paul
----
It may look like I'm just sitting here doing nothing,
but I'm really actively waiting for all my problems to go away.
If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right!
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