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UCITA, Licen[cs]e wrangling (was Re: Python 2.0b1 is released!)

Grant Griffin g2 at seebelow.org
Wed Sep 13 13:29:28 EDT 2000 
In article <8pnuqo$f69$1 at newsserver.rrzn.uni-hannover.de>,
breiter at usf.Uni-Osnabrueck.DE says...
...
>Free Software is not necessary given away without charge.
>Think Linux Distributions or Cygnus.
>Free Software also can be commercial.

Kindda oxymoronical, ain't it? (Think "free to mislead", not "free beer". ;-)

>
>>>As another example, if you include a little GPL'ed code in a program
>>>you distribute as an executable, there isn't much to force you to
>>>follow the terms of the GPL; it's pretty unlikely that anybody will
>>>discover this grave slight to the Noble Cause of Freedom, and it's even
>>>_more_ unlikely that anybody will come after you for doing it. 
>
>This is also not completly true.  It has been done there are some
>cases, which were important.
>The owner of the copyright has the right to sue.
>NeXT for instance used the gcc and added objective-c.
>Corel was put inder pressure because the were not including the
>source...

I don't know much about "Objective-C", but I doubt that it falls under the
category of "a _little_ (GPL'ed) code".

if-it-did,-corel-would-be-'free'-to-rewrite-it-from-scratch-<wink>
  -ly y'rs,

=g2
p.s.  Doesn't anybody have any examples besides Objective-C of the GPL's
"copyleft" concept actually working as intended?  I'd honestly be interested to
hear one!

_____________________________________________________________________

Grant R. Griffin                                       g2 at dspguru.com
Publisher of dspGuru                           http://www.dspguru.com
Iowegian International Corporation            http://www.iowegian.com
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