🚀 go-pugleaf

I don't think the GPL could, if the FSF had originally wanted it to, prevent
people (or corporations) from doing "private" things like ports and mods to
GPL-protected software.

I don't think the issue is any different here than for, say, music or books,
where what you do with them in the privacy of your home (or workplace) is
pretty much up to you.  If you want to "produce" your own version of a
hit song with you singing the lead part, you don't have to worry about paying
a royalty or anything as long as you don't publish your version (i.e. keep it
private).

On the other hand, modern software licenses do (try to) restrict people from
doing otherwise private things like disassembling, decompiling, and copying
for use on multiple privately owned machines, so maybe the GPL could have used
whatever leverage those licenses use to keep people from not publishing even
private changes.  But I think that would have been a bad idea even if it was
possible, as Paul Rockwell suggests in his posting (as in cases where
modifying is much easier than distributing).

The thing I like about protecting my software with the GPL is that it can be
freely distributed, but under few circumstances can I ever find myself in
the (legally permitted) situation where I am (possibly) hired as a contractor
to do work on a derivative of my own software and find I can't do it because
there is no source code (i.e. the vendor of the derivative made it
"proprietary").

There actually are two ways that this can happen legally: 1) the vendor
doesn't provide source code except when asked, the customer doesn't
ask for it during the n-year (3, as I recall) period, and THEN hires me (or
tries to, but we discover there's no source code); 2) the vendor and the
customer are separate departments in the same organization, and the
derivative was not otherwise published.

In case #1, it is unlikely but possible that no customer of that vendor asked
for the source code -- as long as anyone did, somebody is likely to have
been willing to make it widely available so we all have access.

In case #2, where department A is unwilling to give department B access to
source code so they can hire me to make changes, I think the whole organization
gets what it deserves (a classic case of not letting one's left hand know
what one's right hand is doing, something no laws can prevent).  :-)

At least it isn't as bad as what can happen with public domain software, where
it is possible (even likely) that 95% of the users running derivatives of my
own software have no access to source code, cannot freely make copies, and
(bad for me :-) therefore cannot hire me to make changes to their products.
(They have only the vendor to go to for maintenance; or they can hire me to
do the whole port from scratch, which typically is orders of magnitude more
difficult and expensive.)
--

James Craig Burley, Software Craftsperson    burley@gnu.ai.mit.edu