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

"Galen Boyer" <galenboyer_at_hotpop.com> wrote in message news:uy9nwn5bo.fsf_at_verizon.net...
>
> 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.

In the example you give, a customer can pay for such an extension to GPL'd code
and there is no problem, so long as the extended version is used internally by the
customer, not distributed external to their organisation.

If the customer wants to distribute the code outside their organisation, they must
provide the source code to the executable image under the GPL terms (either packaged along with the binary or available via mail order).

If your customer were to distribute the binary without providing GPL'd source code to the
whole, including the extensions you wrote for them under contract, then they are in violation
of the GPL terms that applied to the code you extended on their behalf.

At that point, the customer is no longer licensed to use the GPL code at all, and therefore
any such use is a breach of copyright and therefore illegal.

So, by performing proprietary extensions to existing GPL code for the customer, the
liability that you have to them is actually increased rather than reduced. As a contract
programmer in such an example, I would tend to avoid such situation or at least make
sure the ramifications of the GPL are clearly stated in your contract with them. Received on Mon Sep 03 2001 - 10:36:50 CDT