On Mon, 2009-03-16 at 20:30 -0500, Curtis Olson wrote: > Here's a hypothetical question. > > Let's say some company "A" builds an internal product prototype that > incorporates FlightGear as part of a larger aggregate system.
Murky waters here. And a slippery slope to be on. > Let's say they even make a few small changes to FlightGear. Now they > give away a demo system This is distributing. If there were no changes simply pointing to the FG source at cvs.flightgear.org would be sufficient. However, as they distributed a modified executable, they owe the community the modified sources to that executable. That is simply the "cost" of using flightgear. > to a couple different potential customers and say, "Hey what do you > think." They haven't rolled out an actual product, they haven't had > any actual sales. No customer has paid any money for the copy of the > system. > > Has the GPL been violated? Probably. >From the GPL v2 license preamble: Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs; and that you know you can do these things. "You" above refers to both company "A" and the potential customers that received flightgear from company "A." Company "A" has the freedom to sell copies of a modified flightgear. The potential customers have a right to the modified source code, and the freedom to further distribute the modified sources and binary. "You" above also applies to anyone who receives a copy of the modified flightgear. So if company "A" is distributing a modified binary copy of flightgear without offering the modified sources, they have violated the GPL. IANAL, Ron ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Apps built with the Adobe(R) Flex(R) framework and Flex Builder(TM) are powering Web 2.0 with engaging, cross-platform capabilities. Quickly and easily build your RIAs with Flex Builder, the Eclipse(TM)based development software that enables intelligent coding and step-through debugging. Download the free 60 day trial. http://p.sf.net/sfu/www-adobe-com _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
