From owner-freebsd-chat Thu Apr 19 9:52:59 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from smtp10.phx.gblx.net (smtp10.phx.gblx.net [206.165.6.140]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8356337B43C for ; Thu, 19 Apr 2001 09:52:56 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from tlambert@usr08.primenet.com) Received: (from daemon@localhost) by smtp10.phx.gblx.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) id JAA112480; Thu, 19 Apr 2001 09:52:54 -0700 Received: from usr08.primenet.com(206.165.6.208) via SMTP by smtp10.phx.gblx.net, id smtpdQUGUya; Thu Apr 19 09:52:50 2001 Received: (from tlambert@localhost) by usr08.primenet.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) id JAA03074; Thu, 19 Apr 2001 09:53:12 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <200104191653.JAA03074@usr08.primenet.com> Subject: Re: Stallman now claims authorship of Linux To: trevor@jpj.net (Trevor Johnson) Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2001 16:53:12 +0000 (GMT) Cc: tlambert@primenet.com (Terry Lambert), brett@lariat.org (Brett Glass), freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: <20010419065023.A5664-100000@blues.jpj.net> from "Trevor Johnson" at Apr 19, 2001 07:14:26 AM X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL2] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org > > > Are you saying that hiring someone to make changes to a GPL'd program > > > would violate this second provision? > > > > No. He's saying that the intellectual property involved in a 40 > > line change that results from 3 years of research should be able > > to result in sufficient revenue to pay for that research. > > > > In orther words, brilliant ideas and hard intellectual effort > > should be rewarded. > > The original program must have been brilliantly written, if it was worth > spending so much time on the improvements. If the only way to get revenue > from it is by selling binary copies and keeping the source secret, then > the GPL would be an impediment. Perhaps the original author would be > willing to offer you the program under some other conditions, perhaps in > exchange for a share of the rewards. Wouldn't that be fair? Except that he can't, since those 40 lines are a change to SQUID, which is under the GPL, and if he offers them at all, he has to offer the source code. That's really the point: under the GPL, there's no way to amortize R&D costs on brilliant additions resulting in derivative works. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message