Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2001 18:30:30 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in (Rahul Siddharthan) Cc: tlambert@primenet.com (Terry Lambert), trevor@jpj.net (Trevor Johnson), brett@lariat.org (Brett Glass), freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Stallman now claims authorship of Linux Message-ID: <200104191830.LAA16986@usr09.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <20010419185843.N88142@lpt.ens.fr> from "Rahul Siddharthan" at Apr 19, 2001 06:58:43 PM
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
> > 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. > > If he's the sole author, he can offer it to you under a different > license. If he's not the sole author, he has no right to offer it to > you anyway. Yes, he can offer it as a "binary weapon", where I have to put the pieces together. He can also offer it in another product, so long as it isn't a derivative work of SQUID. The problem comes when research is done in the context of a GPL product: does porting the results to a clean program remove the derivation from GPL'ed code taint? > > That's really the point: under the GPL, there's no way to amortize > > R&D costs on brilliant additions resulting in derivative works. > > Even if you were right: so? With closed-source, there's no way to > *make* derivative works. You're wrong. I can pay a German to disassemble and document the code in order to provide documentation of interfaces, and then use that documentation to produce a derivative work that uses the binary code in ways in which it was not intended to be used by the original author. Really, when we do any of this, we are exceeding the vision of the original author, and that's what we're asking to be permitted to do... > And with a BSD-style license, the original > author doesn't benefit if you make your brilliant addition, which (in > your scenario) presumably couldn't have been made without the original > code. (If it can be done without that code, go ahead and do it. Why > do you want to benefit from the work of the SQUID authors?) Maybe the original autor doesn't give a flying if they benefit. > Besides, you *can* dual-license, if you can get the agreement of all > the copyright owners. That's about the biggest "If" I've ever seen crammed into under 80 characters. 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
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200104191830.LAA16986>