On Tue, Aug 24, 2004, Anatoly Vorobey wrote about "Re: GPL and commercial application": > you distribute XYZ++ at all. If you sell the *rights* to XYZ++ to your > client (as opposed to a license to use XYZ++), you pass on those > obligations to them as well, and now *they* cannot distribute any > work based on XYZ++ without also distributing it under the GPL.
This is exactly what I said. These extra "obligations" are in effect a license you must have your client agree to. This means that you cannot create just any license you want for XYZ++ (in addition to the GPL) - any new license you invent must have parts of the GPL (like the parts on future derivatives also being released as GPL) stuck into it, and in essence it can't be too different from the GPL itself. So you can relicense XYZ++, but you are very restricted in what this relicensing can do. By the way, this issue isn't Academic only. I have seen companies looking to buy the full rights to some open source program, which will allow them to do anything with they code they buy without ANY strings attached. It appears that (for reasons we just discussed), only the copyright holder of the program can do that. This may be an interesting way to make money for writers of free software - everybody can copy their software, but only they have the ability to relicense it arbitrarily to fit the requirements of proprietary software makers. -- Nadav Har'El | Tuesday, Aug 24 2004, 7 Elul 5764 [EMAIL PROTECTED] |----------------------------------------- Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |I'm a peripheral visionary: I see into http://nadav.harel.org.il |the future, but mostly off to the sides. ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
