Anon Y Mous wrote: >> It becomes more complex than that, if Sun were to take a patent license on >> such GPL'd (VLC) >> code and then sell the product the next person would not be able to pass >> along those GPL >> "freedoms" which would be in violation of the GPL.... > > You are reading way too much into what I'm saying. I never said Sun should > patent > any open source projects. I just said they should add branding, support and > codecs > to a media player and sell it to Solaris users (such as myself) to make a > little > quick cash.
I do not think anybody was really suggesting that anyone patent any code in open source projects. I think you are misreading, or Anon Y Mous misspoke? The problem is that you can't link non-free code into a GPL program and distribute it, due to clause 7 of the GPL. You can only distribute such a program if it has a GPL exception which allows this, or if you avoid using a non-free license in the first place. > It is 100% perfectly legal to SELL people products that are based on GPL'ed > code. As long as you are conforming to the terms of the GPL license. > Red Hat Linux bases their entire business model on selling people binary > distributions of GPL'ed code and if Red Hat can sell people a branded version > of Linux called "Red Hat Enterprise Linux" that is really not all that much > different from CentOS other than it has pictures of little red hats on it, > then > Sun could sell people a branded version of an open source media player if > they > wanted to. Not true. Any code that Red Hat distributes which has a GPL license cannot require paying a licensing fee to use without violating the terms of the GPL license itself. > Sun has already released a branded version of GNOME called "Java Desktop > System", > so why not a branded version of VLC called "Java Media Player". Makes perfect > sense to me. Sun could sell a branded media player, as long as it has a license which allows doing so. VLC and mplayer do not have such a license. There are other free media players which do have licensing which would allow any company to sell them, such as programs based on GStreamer which have appropriate GPL license exceptions allowing such distribution. > Richard Stallman said himself that there is nothing wrong with selling > someone a binary product distribution made out of bundled up GPL'ed code. > The only restriction with the GPL is that Sun would have to give the > source code any changes they made to the GPL project back to the community, > and in my experience Sun should have no problem with doing this as they > are historically one of the #1 contributors of open source code (in terms > of sheer quantity of code shared with the community). If you look at how > much code Sun has shared, they are up there with other top contributors > such as the Regents of UC Berkeley and GNU / FSF. Another restriction of the GPL is that anyone you distribute the code to needs to be able to freely redistribute it. If it is necessary to pay a licensing fee to use the software, as is the case with most media codecs, then this restriction is violated. It doesn't matter how much Sun has contributed to the free software community, people who distribute GPL programs should respect the terms of the license. Brian
