| William H. Magill on Sat, 19 Jul 2003 21:41:07 -0400 |
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On Friday, July 18, 2003, at 08:31 PM, Tobias DiPasquale wrote: GPL will give you control of the work itself and all derivative works, requiring all of those to be licensed under the same constraints, as well. For your purposes, GPL and LGPL are the same as far as control of your idea is concerned: LGPL requires that the core code be GPL, but unlike the GPL, one can use LGPL-code as a component of a larger system without requiring all other components to be GPL. My understanding of the GPL is that the author GIVES UP "control" of the code when they put it under that license -- that is to say, the author 1) can no longer derive any "private" use of the code (i.e. extractions/derivations/modifications etc. of that code are also GPL'd), and 2) has no ability to say who can and who cannot use (or modify) the code for whatever reason. Furthermore, the Copyright to the code is owned by the Free Software Foundation, not the author. Which places the enforcement ability in the hands of the FSF, not the author. The purpose of the GPL being to forever remove ANYONE from having the ability to "control" use of the code. (Which I realize, is a kind of "control.") The only requirement for use of the code is to publish the source. From the preamble. "For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that you have. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights." T.T.F.N. William H. Magill # Beige G3 - Rev A motherboard - 768 Meg # Flat-panel iMac (2.1) 800MHz - Super Drive - 768 Meg # PWS433a [Alpha 21164 Rev 7.2 (EV56)- 64 Meg]- Tru64 5.1a magill@mcgillsociety.org magill@acm.org magill@mac.com _________________________________________________________________________ Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org Announcements - http://lists.netisland.net/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce General Discussion -- http://lists.netisland.net/mailman/listinfo/plug
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