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/
