Re: Releasing an Oracle PL/SQL Web Toolkit application under the GPL

From: Galen Boyer <galenboyer_at_hotpop.com>
Date: 2 Sep 2001 22:43:04 -0500
Message-ID: <uy9nwn5bo.fsf@verizon.net>

On Sun, 2 Sep 2001, aziegler_at_the-wire.com wrote:

> Actually, if you include GPLed code within a commercial
> package, the WHOLE package must be released as GPLed. Your
> statement is incorrect; additionally,

Hm... I thought I understood it, but it has been a long time since I read any of the licensing prose.

I went back into it and found at the bottom, ,----

| This General Public License does not permit incorporating your
| program into proprietary programs.  If your program is a
| subroutine library, you may consider it more useful to permit
| linking proprietary applications with the library.  If this is
| what you want to do, use the GNU Library General Public License
| instead of this License.

`----

So, it looks like you are correct.

> the customer may not like the code that you've written to be
> GPLed because it also means that you can keep a copy of the
> code (legally) even though it is theirs.

Really? Hm... That is definitely different than I believed I learned early on, but then, I've never developed GPL'd code, just used it. I didn't find the section in the GPL which stated this either way, definitively. Can you point me to it?

I thought a customer could pay you to do an extension and then it was theirs. But, they couldn't go out and get a patent on the extension, the GPL'd code or the package.

I guess the fact that it is GPL'd with your definition would meet a FSF's idea even better. When one has extensions done to software, and then hoards it, then the rest of the software users do not benefit. I can see how the FSF would follow this to your definition. I just can't find it.

-- 
Galen Boyer
It seems to me, I remember every single thing I know.

Received on Sun Sep 02 2001 - 22:43:04 CDT