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Is CocoaTech Violating the GPL?

Posted by Cliff on from the bad-company-no-donut dept.

elliotj asks: "In the latest version of their Finder-replacement product, PathFinder CocoaTech has included a terminal feature based on sourcecode from the GPL'd iTerm. They have made available the classes they developed from the iTerm sources, but not all the sourcecode for their product. Since iTerm is GPL (and not LGPL), shouldn't they have to make the ENTIRE codebase available? This is being debated on their forums. If this is true, what can we do to get CocoaTech to open up the rest of the code?"

2 of 180 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Nothing. by Carnildo · · Score: 5, Informative
    They are much more likely to remove the GPL'd code than they are to open up their product.

    As was pointed out in the forums, they've got a third option:

    Or licence it independently. There's nothing in the GPL to prevent you from comming to a seperate understanding with the author(s) of the GPL code, and using it under whatever terms you find mutually agreable.

    The GPL is not "viral" and does not prevent rational solutions to cases like this. Let's not feed the FUDsters.

    -- MarkusQ
    --
    "They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
  2. They have a choice of three steps to take by kgp · · Score: 5, Insightful
    It's obvious that the guys at Cocoatech don't have a great grasp of the intricacies of the GPL (and didn't run this by their IP lawyers which I suspect they don't have).

    They can do one of three things:
    1. Release the source for Pathfinder. I don't see this happening -- this is not an outcome they had banked on. Hardline GPL zealots will of course continue to bray that "they released the product so they MUST release ALL of their sources".
    2. Remove the iTerm functionality from their product. The simplest and easiest fixed especially whilst they consider their options.
    3. License the source for iTerm under non-GPL terms from the original authors. The owners of the source (though this would mean that they wouldn't be able to take GPLed fixes unless the author of those fixes agreed to whatever license OR the other license is LGPL.

    Give them a break so that they can fix their mistake (from Eblen Moglen's writings on the subject this is the FSF prefered method) at least until it becomes clear that the breach of the GPL is egregious.

    Who knows they might even release some source this way!