On Wednesday 12 February 2003 20:09, Andrew wrote:

> Do you understand my point?
I understood all of those points by 1993.



> > but requiring that changes and im provements which are
> > redistributed are made available for the pool.
>
> This statement is utterly un-true. None of the free software
> licenses require this. In fact this is one of the FUD campaign
> that Microsoft has been propagating.  Be warned!

I believe my interpretation to be correct.  If you modify and 
redistribute a program licenced under the GPL you must make 
available the source code charging no more than reasonable costs 
of distribution.

The requirement to release the source code into the commons of 
any version of the program that you redistribute is core and 
fundamental to the Free/Libre and OSI software philosophy.

Modify it to your hearts content, and use it, provided you do 
not redistribute it, and that is OK under GPL.

Two points on what one may do and why one generally will not do 
some of it:-
1.   OK under GPL, but it may well be that under a licence ideal 
for healthcare and specific to coding and classification systems 
disclosure of any changes to a classification library (eg the 
Read codes) should be required regardless of redistribution.
 To derive one, we might subclass the GPL or FDL to produce a 
more restrictive, copyleft required licence.  I am unsure of the 
merits of doing so.

2.  The permission to do what you like with it but not 
redistribute the result is also a fundamental freedom, but in a 
healthcare ecology it is perverse and profitless as far as I can 
see to retain and develop secretly in parallel a modified 
version of healthcare software, since if you ever wish to 
distribute it you will then have to expose the fork and 
meanwhile you have to check test and perhaps modify every 
enhancement from the main branch before incorporating it.  VIsta 
had such a diversion in one region and reported themselves 
pleased to have finally rolled it back together.  In the context 
of financial software in healthcare organisations I can imagine 
this being transiently useful, but doubt it helps in the long 
term.


-- 
From one of the Linux desktops of Dr Adrian Midgley 
http://www.defoam.net/             

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