--- In Dave Cramer <> wrote:
>
> The GPL is an interesting read.
>
> AFACT (I'm not a lawyer )
>
> You don't have to publicize your changes. You only have to provide
> them to your customers.
>
> Your customers can be only paying customers. In other words you
can
> have a product which you charge
> for but you have to provide your customers access to your code. Now
an
> interesting note here is that you don't
> have to make it compile for them, just provide them with source
code.
>
> Another interesting note is that only the copyright holder has
legal
> rights to enforce this. So if I'm the copyright holder
> and I make my code GPL I can do pretty much what ever I want with
it.
>
> Now you'd wonder how I happen to have this point of view. Well I
> recently looked into this with another project where
> all of the above was being done :(
>
> Now I have a few more reasons to like freebsd like licenses.
>
> Dave
>
>
> On 23-Nov-07, at 2:55 AM, ndivner wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > Thank you for the responses and yes I will endeavour to find some
> > legal advice on the subject.
> >
> > Best regards,
> >
> > Noel.
> >
> > --- In "ndivner" <divner@> 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.
> > >
> >
> >
> >
>
It seems most people are missing the point about GPL here. You only
have to provide source code and your software under GPL if you base
it on some existing GLPed code. If you right your own code you do
what you like with your copyright.
Just because the harware you run has a Linux OS does not oblige
everything that may ever run on it to be OSS.
Simply put the spirit of GPL is "here's my code , use, enjoy and
distribute it freely. If you modify it you must release the results
under the same conditions. Otherwise do the job yourself from
scratch."
For example, I'm posting from Linux Opera which is a closed source
binary product. It's now free but originally I payed licence fee for
previous versions. That does not conflict with the fact just about
everything else here GPL.
If you modify the kernel you refer to you are obliged to GPL your
mods and provide source. If you write a kernel module or a standalone
program you can do as you wish.
The obvious place to ask for clarification is the Free software
Foundation whose address is at the top of any GPL code. They have
lawyers.
HTH
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