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Novell Quotes AT&T on Derivative Works
grendelkhan writes "Novell has released their latest correspondance with the litigous bastards ordering them to stop the lawsuit by noon tomorrow, and clarify what the SVRX licensing agreements with AT&T meant regarding derivative works. The letter quotes AT&T from the April '85 issue of $echo as stating that they 'claim no ownership interest in any portion of such a modification or derivative work.' So much for the ladder rung analogy."
And reader highwaytohell links to today's CRN article in which Eben Moglen suggests that the SCO/Linux lawsuit cannot move ahead "until SCO resolves its dispute with Novell. And regardless of which company prevails in court, he said, customers won't have to pay any company for a license fee since both claimants--SCO and Novell--have distributed the Linux code under the GPL. Once again, SCO have no comment."
IANAL, but that would seem to violate any reading of the GPL I can imagine.
;)
Totally correct. The GPL is misquoted on Slashdot all the time, usually by well meaning but uninformed people.
Everyone who hasn't done it yet, please go to GNU's License Page and just bookmark it now. Read it later, fine, but go and read it. The GPL is actually interesting reading (for a legal document, that is). But the GPL is not a license to do what you want. It is actually quite restrictive. For the rest of you, this is my impressions of the licenses, which will no doubt be picked to pieces by people who claim to be more of an expert. Your milage may vary.
PD=Public Domain, Do anything you want, call it your own, sell it, change it, secret it away, whatever. There are NO copyrights on the code. PDing code means giving up all ownership.
BSD =2 kinds, basically do almost anything you want, but give proper credit. Code is copyrighted but distribution is not restricted.
GPL= Do what you want, but you MUST share the code if you distribute the binaries. If you don't distribute the binaries, you can die with all your secret code and its legal. If you accidently distribute binaries, but don't want to distrubute source, you have to recall all the binaries. Code is copyrighted, and much is donated to the FSF, consolidating enforcement.
If you write code, you can release it under two or more different licenses (but not PD and any other). Mysql does this, releases main code GPL and also issues private licenses so companies willing to pay can modify it without releasing their changes if they distribute it. This is a legitimate way an open source company can make money and we all benefit from the Free code.
You can never "unGPL" code. If version 1.0 was ever GPL, it will always be GPL. If you want to make 1.1 proprietary, you can, but I can take 1.0 and fork the code into a new project and you can never take that away once it is granted. If I make changes to GPL code and rerelease it, it has to be released as GPL licensed.
You can not restrict anyone's use of GPL programs. If I want to use it to run a nuclear plant, guide chemical filled missles, run a day care center, or run the seti@home client, no one, including the copyright holder, can limit me. This would include for profit and non profit uses.
If I use GPL code to make my program, I can never take away your right to have the source if I give/sell you the binaries. If you want to take my 1.1 code, and fork it and call it something else and release it as version 2.0, or 1.0, I can't stop you.
If I make a GPL program or derivitive, and the only person I ever distributed it to is Taco, then I am only obligated to distribute the source code or make it available to Taco. I don't have to put the source on the CD, I just have to make the source reasonably accessible to anyone I distribute the binaries to. (email, ftp site, web site, buy the cd for $5 media charge).
If I want to sell your GPL software as a package with or without support, I may. I may charge any fee I wish without paying any royalies. If I sell Taco a copy of "GNU/FooTastiC 2.0" for $1 million dollars, he can give it away to anyone for free, including the source, and I can't restrict his ability to do so. Nor can the copyright holder.
The GPL (and LGPL for libraries) are good licenses for most projects. It protects individual users more than the author/copyright holder in many ways, but guarantees that the author can not take away your right to use the software for any reason. I also think there is a place for proprietary software, including proprietary applicationss on top of a GPL operating system.
This concludes our GPL primer
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