Re: Corel Linux

[Stephen J. Turnbull <nospam [at] sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>]

>>>>> Owen == A V Le Blanc <LeBlanc [at] mcc.ac.uk> writes:

Owen> On Tue, Sep 21, 1999 at 05:50:50PM +0900, Stephen
Owen> J. Turnbull wrote:
>> Yes, Corel's error requires response. The GPL doesn't allow
>> you to distribute beta versions under restricted terms to
>> anybody (who hasn't already signed away their rights to you,
>> eg, in an employment contract).

Owen> I'm not sure of this; the Free Software Foundation (who may
Owen> know something about the GPL)
[snip]

Their legal knowledge is irrelevant, of course. The FSF is the
effective owner of the GCC copyright and can distribute under any
terms they please. Note that _Linus_ could _not_ do the same with
Linux because the various copyrights are owned by the authors.

[snip]
Owen> were, of course, accused of inconsistency at the time.

Justly so. RMS himself does not always obey his own rules. I am
participating in a thread in another forum where the possibility of a
company licensing a software patent for an optimization not included
in GCC, adding it to GCC, and distributing the result was brought up.
This is illegal, of course, unless the license permits redistribution
under the GPL, which is hardly likely since that would drastically
reduce the value of the patent. RMS was quite disparaging about the
whole idea, as you might predict. I don't see a difference in
principle between that and restricted beta distributions, myself,
which RMS uses a lot. (In particular, features that prove to be
unstable in beta test may get removed, but some non-beta-list
customers might want to use them. I think this is an exact parallel.)

Owen> I'm all for making sure the legalities are nicely tidied
Owen> away, and it may be the 'non-disclosure agreement' for GPLed
Owen> software is (or should be) merely an agreement and not
Owen> legally binding, but I think they can ask you to agree to
Owen> such terms without violating the licence.

Request, yes, although that's against the spirit. (Cygnus is an
interesting case; their GNUPro distribution is fully GPL'd, except for
some separate modules that are produced on contract which get GPL'd
after a lag. Two Cygnus employees I am acquainted with are unaware of
any case in which GNUPro has been put up for public FTP by one of
their customers, although both of my acquaintances invariably explain
to their clients that that is their right. So even if you imply the
customer ought to redistribute, they don't. :) However, Corel
specifically mentions remedies. That is extortion at best, since what
they're threatening you with is baseless legal action.

Of course they can do this for their proprietary software, and they
can distribute that with GPLed software under the mere aggregation
condition, I believe; but they cannot do it with anything they have
received under the GPL.

--
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Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences Tel/fax: +81 (298) 53-5091
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