🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <62381@netnews.upenn.edu> yee@mipgsun.mipg.upenn.edu (Conway Yee) writes:
>Also remember, in most commercial licenses, you are not given the option 
>of getting source.  You can not modify what you don't have.  In GPL, you 
>are given the source.  Thus, you have the option of making modifications.  
>If you find offensive the fact that your changes must be redistributable, 
>then don't make changes.  In this respect the commercial license and the
>GPL is identical.  In one you can not make changes (lack of source) in
>the other you will not (having your own code redistributable is offensive).
>What is the big deal?

This argument fails with respect to true public domain software.

>Let us take the possibility that you have a source license to a product
>(i.e. ATT UNIX).  You are free to make improvements.  Your code can
                                                       ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>be under any license you choose.
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

If I modify GNU code, and decide to give it to someone, my modifications
_can't_ be under any license I choose; they must be under the GNU license.

>Remember, however, that in order to
>be useful to anyone, a person using your code must have access to
>UNIX source (if he doesn't, then you didn't need the source either.  An
>example is someone who writes a spreadsheet).  Thus, a prerequisite for
>your licensee is a UNIX source license.  Thus, effectively ATT propagates
>their license.  Is this any different from GPL?

Yes.  The AT&T "propagation" only spreads to AT&T code.  If I had code of my
own, added it to AT&T source, and gave it to someone else who also had a source
license, that person could cut out my added code and use it for whatever he
wishes without propagating the AT&T license.  If I did the same to GNU source,
the license would be propagated.
--
"In the end, one or the other will triumph--a funeral dirge will be sung over
the Soviet republic or over world capitalism."
	-- V.I. Lenin, 1920

Kenneth Arromdee (UUCP: ....!jhunix!arromdee; BITNET: arromdee@jhuvm;
     INTERNET: arromdee@cs.jhu.edu)