🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <13008@xenna.Xylogics.COM> carlson@steam.Xylogics.COM (James Carlson) writes:
>We absolutely cannot distribute the sources to our modifications -- or
>even the resulting object code -- to any requestors from the general
>public because it would represent a security and an internal copyright
>problem.  

I can understand your copyright concerns, but not the security ones.  Your
modified gdb doesn't give users access to anything they didn't have access
to before, it just makes it easier for them to interpret it.

>	   On the other hand, we may need to be able to distribute the
>objects to subsidiaries or even OEMs, if necessary.

How well do you trust your subsidiaries and OEMs?  If you simply *asked*
them not to redistribute your code, would they comply?  The GPL doesn't
permit you to restrict redistribution, but neither does it force anyone to
redistribute.  So, if your subsidiaries and OEMs *voluntarily* agree not to
redistribute it, you're OK.  But if they then go back on their word, I
suspect you don't have any legal recourse to punish them; in the case of
OEMs, though, you could stop doing business with them (you're kind of stuck
with your subsidiaries, I suppose).

Since your subsidiaries and OEMs presumably share your concerns about the
use of the product, I think they would most likely agree.

>(We could live with being forced to send source to subsidiaries, but not
>to the general public.)

You would only have to do this if they asked for it.  The GPL says that you
either must include source with the binary distribution, or let anyone who
receives the binary know that they can ask for source as well.  If the
subsidiaries aren't really interested in the source, they won't ask for it.
-- 
Barry Margolin
System Manager, Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com          {uunet,harvard}!think!barmar