On Mon, 2005-10-10 at 11:21 -0400, K.S. Bhaskar wrote: > Todd -- > > It seems to me that the writer has two issues confused: > > 1. A possible loophole in the GPL. > > 2. Investigation and correction of a license violation. > > My understanding of the GPL is that selling an appliance containing > GPL'd code would constitute distribution, and the GPL does require the > source code to be made available if the binaries are distributed. >
Yeah, that is incorrect (at least, could be incorrect depending on how the GPL is interpreted, but has never been proved in a court of law one way or the other, so basically is as incorrect as any murky opaque legal thing can be) though. Because the competitors are never distributing a binary to a 3rd party, they are never required to distribute source. The competitors are giving (limited) access to a piece of hardware that contains the object code, but never access to the object code itself. Obviously this is just how some people read it, not others. The GPL is basically untested, and no one, even a lawyer, has no clue how any judge would actually respond to any legal case using the GPL. I am pretty sure (but not positive) that the GPL remains basically untested in a court, and has just been used so far (successfully) as a threat. Either way, the fact remains that unless you are willing to go to court (and very potentially lose) any case like this, it is something you need to be aware of when releasing your software under the GPL. > So, it would seem that the author of a GPL'd product is seeing GPL > violations of his software, and is choosing to withdraw the source code > from future releases of his software, rather than go after the > violators. This would be a legitimate business decision for him, and > one that I can understand, although it does sadden me. > > To me, the possible loophole has to do with whether renting an appliance > constitutes distribution. I believe it would (and I certainly hope that > it would), but I'm no leagle begal. it didn't sound from the article > that rentals were what caused the author of Nessus to make his decision. > Interesting that you read it like that. Here is a direct quote from the article. "A number of companies are using the source code against us, by selling or renting appliances, thus exploiting a loophole in the GPL," he wrote in a later e-mail, justifying his decision. "So in that regard, we have been fueling our competition, and we want to put an end to that. Nessus 3 contains an improved engine, and we don't want our competition to claim to have improved 'their' scanner." Seems to be, that the author is very clearly explaining that is *exactly* why he made his decision. How else did you read that? --Todd ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: Power Architecture Resource Center: Free content, downloads, discussions, and more. http://solutions.newsforge.com/ibmarch.tmpl _______________________________________________ Hardhats-members mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members
