Does Shareware X-Chat for Windows Violate the GPL?

pc486 writes "The popular IRC client X-Chat has recently come under criticism as to whether or not the new shareware Windows version of the IRC client violates the GPL. All sorts of points are being persued, such as pure GPL Gettext linking, gtk translation worries, copyright issues, who's code is what and more." This is a complicated tale of GPL licensing, so beware.

Comments

Id don't think it breaks the GPL

[arcanumas]

I saw this yesterday and i was wondering the same thing.
But as far as i can tell, they are only selling the "binary' version of X-chat for windows.

On the page it says that you are free to download the source code.

So how is this any different from RedHat and others?

Re:Id don't think it breaks the GPL

[pc486]

It's a GPL project with contributers and Peter assumed that since the contributers never stated licensing terms that he could close up the Windows client. That and the fact that only the *nix source would be downloadable.

They can release their own code however they like

[Jan-Pascal]

Sure, They can release their own code however they like, but not other people's code they use. That's exactly what the GPL is for: to prevent community work to be taken into a proprietary product and thus depriving the community from the enhancements made to its own code.

Interesting

[Moth7]

Given that it's shareware with a 30 day binary license, does this mean that since it's sourcecode is GPLd, they must provide the source to the code which enforces the 30 day trial? Strictly udner the GPL this should happen, but it would be suicide if someone could just come along, request the source and use it to break the crippleware timer.
I don't see any way how one could lock a user out after 30 days without it being breakable from seeing the sourcecode.

Go ChatZilla !

[CdBee]

I hope that if X-Chat is going to have troubles with the GPL it will encourage more developers to help with Mozilla's ChatZilla.

With Mozilla Calendar (Sunbird), Browser (Firefox) and Mail (Thunderbird) already spun off into interesting projects in various stages of development, how long can it be until we have a trule OSS IRC client from them as well?

I've been using iChat for a year and its fine for IRC use already.

Get stuffed windows user

[SmallFurryCreature]

Compile your own damn code you lazy son of a bitch. Do you seriously think anyone cares if you use mirc?

Zed got tired of spending time and money on providing windows binaries. So he deciced to ask that in exchange for the binaries he be compensated. The code for xchat is there. Nobody is being stopped from doing their own compiling.

GPL is free as in freedom not free as in a free lunch. Zed is perfectly in his right to charge for his time. Just as long as he doesn't restrict access to the source he can demand your soul for the binaries if he wants too.

The intresting bit is wether he has restrictd access to the windows code. Providing only paid for windows binaries would be a violation of the GPL. If however the windows source code can be downloaded without restriction there is no problem. Anymore then Suse or Redhat charging you for their binaries x-chat (wich they do through their distro sales).

Anyway smartest thing for zed to do is simply to stop doing windows. Let a windows user worry about it.

Interestingly enough...

[Theatetus]

Just a thought on all the inevitable "free vs. free" threads here: what gets him in trouble is that he gave away binaries gratis. If he just wanted to say "if you want x-chat for Windows, pay me $20" (or whatever) and he sends the buyer the binaries and source if requested. This would be fine, since the GPL doesn't require you to distribute binaries and source to anyone in particular if you don't want to.

This is only a problem because he released binaries without charging for them. So, this might be an example of how distributing free (beer) actually gets in the way of distributing free (speech).