IANAL, but your obligations are exactly the same as say, Oracle.
Their developers contributed code back to the Linux kernel to let it
run their DB efficiently and securely.
Oracle is most certainly not free, or even reasonably priced. Nor is
its code freely available to anyone - even the Linux version. IBM
does this too - for DB2, and many other products that are not free.
If you have to modify the kernel or other GPL-licensed software (like
busybox) to make your product work, then you have to contribute these
code modifications back to the respective projects. If you have to
develop kernel modules, these don't have to be open-source (there's
plenty of those, unfortunately), but kernel patches do. You don't
have to contribute the code modifications you made in the development
process - only those that ended up in the product you distribute.
Your product and its software is your own.
Its really not very hard. If you're looking at a source file with a
GPL license on top of it, be aware of what you're changing in that
file. Are you doing an experiment, or are you making modifications
that will end up in your product? If its in your product, then its
based on someone else's work. The compensation they ask is they want
to see what you changed. If you're starting with a blank page, then
you get to put your own license on top. Be careful of what your code
links to. If its LGPL ("lesser" or "library"), then you have no
obligation. If its a GPL library (readline is a prime example), then
you have an obligation to release what's linked - even if you did
start with a blank page. This is not at all different from using
other non-open, non-GPL code you may have access to.
And good luck finding a lawyer who knows about this stuff. If you've
got borderline cases, you should try to find one, but it would be
much cheaper to just release the borderline cases. Lawyers are much
more expensive than developers. Also, there's a lot less value
embodied in keeping source-code proprietary than people think.
-Ilya
On Nov 21, 2007, at 4:36 PM, ndivner wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> In light of recent litigation with respect to Busybox and the GPL
> licence (see http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS8588416581.html) I
> would like to ask what my obligations are with respect to using a ts-
> 72xx running ts-linux in a commercial product.
>
> Any thoughts?
>
> Best regards,
>
> Noel Diviney.
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
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