Hi, > How should that be possible? How can you do anything to a GPL (not LGPL) > program and then release that as binary only. As its not LGPL we are talking > about, all derivatives and stuff that depends on the sources will have to be > published under the GPL. Or am I mistaken?
Only changes to the source need to be released back to the community. SCO use GPL software in some of their commercial packages and feed back the changes (ha!) to the community. If they want to make money, they charge for media, manuals and support - it's the same as quite a few GPL packages. The source is there for anyone, but the company supplies a precompiled binary and charges for (their) support. There is also nothing to stop someone asking for the licence to be changed for some of their material. As you all know, I've worked on a Quark importer. There was two reasons why it was never released 1. Quark wanted money off us per copy or they'd not be nice to us 2. Any work surrounding the importer could not be released For the importer to be released, we would have to not only change the licence but charge to cover the Quark importer. The Quark stuff had it's mitts in quite a number of source files which meant it would be impracticable to release as a plugin. We can argue over EU law until we're blue in the face, but at the end of the day, it would be Franz and myself up infront of the judge with not a lot of money available for our defence. Quark was therefore dropped :-( TTFN Paul -- One OS to fool them all One browser to find them One email client to bring them all And through security holes, blind them...
