On Thu, Jul 27, 2006 at 11:51:20AM +0300, Uri Even-Chen wrote: > On 7/27/06, Geoffrey S. Mendelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> But is it or is it not legal to install the binary (compiled) version > on more computers without a license? GPL should be free, also when > using the binary form of the software. AFIK, there is nothing in the GPL about selling combinations or compilations (as in collections of things), etc. You can also sell GPL'ed binaries. The freedom refered to in the GPL has nothing to do with the price that you pay for the product. > It looks as if this gray area is big enough, so that it could happen > that companies will take a distribution of Linux, modify it, maybe add > some proprietary software to it, and then sell it as a proprietary > software - like MS-Windows. That's perfectly fine according to the GPL, as long as the source code is available, you can download, compile the program and use it. Keep in mind that the GPL predates Linux. Public domain (the old name for free) software was distrubted in source code. IBM used to have a large group of people maintaing a library of software that was free (as in beer) and there were many other groups, both affiliated with manufacturers and not. When home computers started to appear, people who bought them often did not have the money to buy the equipment and software needed to compile programs. This started the distribution of programs as runable object code. Since the faliure rate for new companies is about 75%, many people bought expensive binary licences, built their business around the "new" computers, a small office could suddenly afford and then became "stuck" as the software vendor went out of business leaving them with software that was out of date, data no one else could read and nowhere to turn to. Please don't start the old "if it works now, it will still do the same thing forever" argument, it does not hold water for payroll or most other business software. It's also not 100% true on Linux, my TV card no longer works due to Kernel changes and no/slow support from the authors of the program. Thanks to the GPL, I could fix it if I wanted to spend the time, but 99.99% of the people using it can't. But .01% is better than none. That's the freedom of the GPL, not the price. This was what I was saying before about gray areas, one company took software they released under the GPL, solicited improvments, some of them major modules, incorporated them into the code and then sold proprietary licenses to that code. If the GPL is freedom, then they took "free" code and sold it into slavery. Why anyone uses their software, or buys their hardware is beyond me, but it's popular on this list. > They may also include technical means to > prevent people from installing it without a license (such as > "activation" in Windows XP). The yearly subscription for online > security patches is a step in this direction. That's fine with me. I don't have to use their subscription, if the software is licensed under the GPL, they have to give me the source code for free, I can apply the patches, or not as the case may be. Even Microsoft does not withhold their patches to people who use bootleg versions of their software. They make it difficult, but the patches are there for the downloading if you know where to look, and they will apply and work. I also am free to use or not use their software. If I don't want to use Linux, I can use any of the versions of BSD, MacOs, Solaris, etc. Geoff. -- Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel [EMAIL PROTECTED] N3OWJ/4X1GM IL Voice: (07)-7424-1667 Fax ONLY: 972-2-648-1443 U.S. Voice: 1-215-821-1838 Visit my 'blog at http://geoffstechno.livejournal.com/ ================================================================= 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]
