Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2001 17:01:07 -0700 (PDT) From: Ted Mittelstaedt <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> Cc: Ted Mittelstaedt <tedm@toybox.placo.com>, FreeBSD Advocacy <advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: FreeBSD and Microsoft Message-ID: <993772867.3b3bc543b74ab@mail.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com> In-Reply-To: <20010628115803.G9802@lpt.ens.fr> References: <20010628111710.E9802@lpt.ens.fr> <001b01c0ffb7$2525b4a0$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> <20010628115803.G9802@lpt.ens.fr>
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Quoting Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in>: > > The GPL is not incompatible with selling a boxed distribution, but it > is incompatible with a "per seat" license. You can sell it to A, but > you can't stop A from further redistributing it, or insist that it can > be installed only on one machine (or used only by one user). > True, but you can say that unless B buys a registered copy of the GPL code from you that they don't get support. Or more interestingly, it might be quite possible to write a module that provides some critical function that is distributed as binary only and that requires some kind of encrypted key exchange between a server you control on the Internet and itself. Then you could modify the GPL code to exchange data with that module using a pipe or script or some such. Depending on the app and how you wrote it, I think you could make serialization difficult enough to break that most people wouldn't make the effort. Naturally, someone could simply read the GPL modifications and rewrite the module you wrote under GPL, but they already do that anyway when people write GPL programs that are functionally identical to commercial programs. With enough ingenuity, someone could defeat the intent of the GPL on a particular piece of software, with value-added software that is a separate module that is separately licensed. As Terry said it would greatly increase administrative overhead because of all the auditing you would have to do, but the GPL is no panacea in this regard. - indeed one of the reasons for the FreeBSD ports system is to sidestep all of the rediculous redistribution requirements that a number of packages place on themselves. Ted To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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