On Mon, Dec 4, 2023 at 9:53 AM João Valverde <j...@v6e.pt> wrote: > > On 04/12/23 14:32, Anders Broman wrote: > > Hi, > > Company plug-ins may have restrictive license as the purpose is to > > only use them internally no public usage "secret" code for proprietary > > protocols under patents or IPL. Do we really want to forbid that? In > > that case why should companies provide code to Wireshark rather than > > just fork and build internally. > > I understand the argument and why that is a point of contention, but > that does not change the terms of the GPL which must be abided by even > if this commit was never merged in the first place. > > I don't think it is a question of whether we want to forbid it, it is > whether we can allow it. I believe the answer to that is a clear no if > we want to respect the terms of the GPLv2 (and I'm fine with that). I am > not a license lawyer so this is just my understanding of the legalities > involved. >
I agree: I think the GPL is pretty clear here and AFAIK we don't grant an exception. That being said, when I used to create custom/proprietary dissectors (that, frankly, were only of interest to people working for my employer), those dissectors were (intentionally) GPL. Any co-employee (to whom I gave the binary) was free to have the source code (and also free to do what they want with it). Since there was genuinely no concern about them sharing said source code (no real risk if they did, but also no reason for them to do it), no additional restrictions were put in place. If, OTOH, there were significant secrets or proprietary information in those dissectors, one could *imagine* that those co-employees/users might have had an additional *condition of employment* (or similar, as long as it does not affect the source license!) that they do not share this proprietary code. I believe this is similar to how Red Hat is getting away with restricting access to RHEL source code: the software license says you can do what you want with it, but if you share it then Red Hat is free to revoke your support contract (or whatever).
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