Nadav Har'El wrote: > On Sat, May 19, 2007, Shachar Shemesh wrote about "Re: GPL Issue": > >> ... >> While TrollTech and MySQL both make their income from >> selling proprietary licenses to GPL code in something which is >> borderline extortion, >> ... >> > > While I agree with you philosphically (all software should be free, etc.), > That's not it at all. If trolltech or MySQL AB want to produce a proprietary piece of software, all the best to them. My problem with their (especially MySQL AB) tactic is that of deceit. I have the same problem with RedHat's actions.
If you want your product to be GPL, and sell proprietary licenses, that's fine. If you try to make the GPL sound more sinister than it is (in RedHat's case - the trademark), and try to make it sound like it covers things it does not, in reality, cover, then I'm not cool with that at all. MySQL AB will have you think that merely USING a database makes you derived work of that database seems absurd to me. They also went ahead and modified their client protocols, just so that the old clients won't work, just so that they can enhance their hold. In so doing, they are making every GPL software out there look bad. > You can think of these software as "commercial software, > which you can freely use yourself or use in free software projects". That's fine, so long as you don't call your software "free". Again, this is more of an issue with MySQL AB than with TrollTech, possibly because I haven't looked closely enough at their product to form an opinion whether a program that merely uses QT is, indeed, derived work. Personally, my own conclusion is to never assign copyrights. The way I see it, the only fair thing is if the original maker has to license the work under the same terms as everyone else. If that's not the case, then the software isn't really free. Shachar ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
