-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Tuesday 20 May 2008, Erach wrote: > [snip] > is it true the gnu license now requires service providers (like > google earth) to make their code (and perhaps expert system rules > too) open-source.
There is no ``the gnu licence''. You are probably referring to one of the three popular licences promoted by GNU: - - The GNU General Public Licence (GPL) - - The GNU Lesser General Public Licence (LGPL) - - The Affero General Public Licence (AGPL) In short: - - The GPL says that if you modify and redistribute the software you must redistribute the source code too. - - The LGPL is primarily meant for libraries, and permits you to make proprietary applications that link with LGPL libraries while keeping the library itself open. - - The AGPL is primarily meant for web services and says that if you use the AGPL-ed software for a web service, you must provide the source code of the software to people who use the service. All this is incredible oversimplification, so don't use it as the basis of starting a court case, ok? :) Coming back to your point: IF google uses AGPL-ed code (which they don't to the best of my knowledge) and IF that code is used to provide a user-facing web service (which it isn't, to the best of my knowledge), THEN they are liable to provide users with the changes they made in the application behind the web service. In other words, it's highly unlikely that google would be forced to provide the source code for google earth any time soon. Regards, - -- Raju - -- Raj Mathur [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kandalaya.org/ GPG: 78D4 FC67 367F 40E2 0DD5 0FEF C968 D0EF CC68 D17F PsyTrance & Chill: http://schizoid.in/ || It is the mind that moves -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFIM4l3yWjQ78xo0X8RAjFVAJ0WWQc5gxOgwZsukIJDef4+f4w/dACggPVA kD0Ol3juohQ6tqd+NI4Xtjo= =DLJa -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
