IANAL. These are my own musings on the GPL and what not. On Mon, Jun 07, 2004 at 05:17:22PM -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > >http://sourceforge.net/projects/debtpayoff/ > >http://sourceforge.net/projects/margaret/ > >http://sourceforge.net/projects/mybudget/ > >http://sourceforge.net/projects/debt-assassin/ > > > >Of course, the final product will have to be licensed as an Open > >Source project. > > I don't think so. I think that the GPL only requires releasing > modifications to open-source projects if you sell the software.
If the product incorporates GPL code (according to the dictates of the license), the resulting product will have to be licensed under the GPL, or the authors will be in violation of the copyrights of those whose code was incorporated into the product. That means that the GPL licensing notification will have to be there, the attribution terms will have to be adhered to, etc., even if the code never leaves the hard disk. > If you sell services run with that software and keep the software on > your servers, I don't think you have to release the code. Please > correct me if I'm wrong. I wasn't necessarily talking about releasing code; I was talking about the licensing. In this case, whoever the authors distribute the product to can ask the authors for the source code of the product, and the authors must provide that code, or they will be in violation of the copyrights of those whose code the authors incorporated into their product. If this product is the result of a work-for-hire, and the hiring entity does not plan to turn around and try to sell binary copies of the software in an attempt to make a profit from software sales, then there is really no reason for the hiring entity to refuse the use GPL code (even then, Red Hat and SuSE are still in business). It can only help the project get done more quickly. In this case, the business model may be to make money via subscriptions or pay-per-session to a debt management web site. If the end user has to download any software onto his computer (e.g., a Java applet), and if that software incorporates any GPL code, then the authors must provide the source code (for the cost of media and shipping) for that software when an end user asks for it, or the authors will be in violation of the copyrights held by those whose code was incorporated. > For example, I could start a web hosting company and make a bunch of > modifications to the apache code, but unless I started selling CDs of my > modified apache I wouldn't have to open-source it. Of course that's not > very nice of me and violates the open-source spirit, but anyway... That's debatable. In fact, the more I study cases involving copyright, the more I am inclined to reject the notion of copyright altogether. It's really making a mess of the digital frontier. Mike
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