On Fri, 26 Aug 2005, Kern Sibbald wrote:
Even the cases above, what's happened is that the companies concerned have
been forced to release the sourcecode for modifications to GCC,
modifications to Linux and Linux device drivers, but thay have NOT been
forced to give up the proprietary software which is the real gem in their
crown.
This is exactly what I was referring to. If you play by the rules, those
kinds of use of GPL require release of your source.
Reread what I wrote.
The cases required that GPL declarations and source releaes be made for
modified bits of GPL code, such as kernel, busybox - and in one case a
Broadcom wireless device driver which was based on another wlan driver,
plus modifications that Broadcaom had made to GCC (normal GCC wouldn't
compile the code Broadcom eventually divulged until it was noticed the GCC
had been modified)
HOWEVER, proprietary code sitting on top of the GPL code was not forced
into GPL, even by vector of including standard libraries (If someone
really doesn't want to risk it they can always go out and buy Intel's CC
instead of usding GCC, etc. The Intel compiler is substantially more
efficient than gcc anyway....)
GPL doesn't taint everything it touches, just items which
include GPL code (which does NOT include header files).
Bacula including mysql client code which may include OpenSSL code doesn't
force OpenSSL or the mysql code into GPL, or any other included libraries
for that matter.
Proprietary code including lesser GPL (lGPL) libraries is not forced into
the GPL either.
If Bacula is GPL, then someone selling a proprietary system containing
Bacula must make the Bacula source available, including any modifications,
but they are not required to give over the source for their proprietary
software unless it is derived from GPL software, or incorporates full GPL
libraries - most common libraries are released under the LGPL, which
doesn't require source disclosure when used as Includes.
Yes, this is fine if Bacula is a separate package. I wonder if users could
legally sell proprietary Python packages that are called by Bacula? I could
care less, but this seems to me to be such a gray area.
Yes they can. this has already been thrashed out several times and is in
no way different to (say) Oracle running on a Linux system.
Companies which are totally risk-averse may decide to compile static
images using proprietary libraries and compilers, at extra cost, but they
retain 100% of their copyright even if having to pay distribution license
royalties to Borland or Intel or whoever else....
GPL is not the boogeyman people make out. It is still a licensing method
and in the end the author stil retains copyright. If anything it enhances
the author's rights while still making the code available for use. Without
GPL, it is impossible to legally use much code and that's where companies
fall over - they always have the option of attempting to negotiate an
indiivual copyright assignment with a software autohor if they don't want
to use GPL.
"GPL" most emphatically is NOT "public domain"
AB
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