> -----Original Message----- > From: Paul Millar [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: 29 May 2002 16:37 > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: [scottish] Redhat vs Everyone else > > > What it actually says is: > ...ARE PROPRIETARY PRODUCTS OF RED HAT, INC. AND OTHERS AND > ARE PROTECTED > BY COPYRIGHT ... >
http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=proprietary proprietary adj. 1. Of, relating to, or suggestive of a proprietor or to proprietors as a group: had proprietary rights; behaved with a proprietary air in his friend's house. 2. Exclusively owned; private: a proprietary hospital. 3. Owned by a private individual or corporation under a trademark or patent: a proprietary drug. So...which parts that RedHat have contributed are to be taken "proprietary" ? > This is just about correct, but its not obvious. The "not > controlled by > any one manufacturer" means that I must be able to distribute > a copy of > the program to my friends, but it doesn't say that explicitly. Compare > with MS's Shared Source (or whatever they call it) project. Its this > "controlled by one manufacturer" clause that rules out MS's license. Ahhh...now you're missing what RedHat has been doing of late: http://www.redhat.com/licenses/rhl_7-3_personal_us.html?location=United+Kingdom&; "Red Hat Linux itself is a collective work under U.S. copyright law. Subject to the trademark use limitations set forth in this Agreement, Red Hat grants you a license in the collective work pursuant to the GNU General Public License." So...if you agree to the "trademark use limitations", you can have the stuff under the GPL? > Basically, the legal profession is still emerging into the 21 > century. > They still have the idea that either someone owns something (so its > proprietary and can't be copied), or its public domain > (nobody owns it). > I'm not entirely sure that this is correct, whilst some people may not realise that GPL != Public Domain, surely if you're paying for legal brains, you pay for reasonably good ones, and ones that interpret the definitions within your "view of the world". Otherwise, it would appear that RH are employing the same mis-informed lawyers as every other company... > Because reality doesn't reflect this anymore (c.f. OpenSource > software), > you are left with this dichotomy, where software is both > proprietary and > non-proprietary. Just because something's GPLed doesn't imply that the author has given up ownership. The GPL is a License, a fairly (un)restrictive one, depending on your point of view, but a License nonetheless, and, although this isn't obvious, it places the same restriction on users that every other License does, that if you don't agree with it, you can't use the software. I happen to believe that the GPL is well-written (for the most part), and that many of the issues people have with it, are due to a lack of understanding, or because they would seek to corrupt the "spirit" of the GPL. Whilst "spirit" of the License cuts very little (although not none) ice with the Legal Establishment, I suspect, that in the race for financial profitability, RedHat may be giving up some of it's ideals, hey, ideals are ideals, but, then so was Linux and the GNU project... Kevin -------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.lug.org.uk http://www.linuxportal.co.uk http://www.linuxjob.co.uk http://www.linuxshop.co.uk --------------------------------------------------------------------
