Re: [dev] arrow in the knee because of the GNU GPL???

From: Kurt Van Dijck <dev.kurt_AT_vandijck-laurijssen.be>
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2014 22:30:28 +0200

On Thu, Jun 26, 2014 at 03:21:01AM +0900, Philip Rushik wrote:
> > The GPL inforces that the codebase stays free.
>
> No, all free licenses enforce a continually free codebase. If I
> release under MIT or BSD, that code that I release will always be free
> and there's nothing anybody else can do about it.

Your opinion is about static code.

>
> GPL tries to control what other people do with code they wrote.

Any license controls what other people can or may do with the code.

> In my opinion that's kinda f'ed up. GPL does not protect your code, any
> license will do that,

In my understanding, GPL enforces that derived work of your code
will still be free to its users. This covers 2 major aspects:
* One cannot repackage or modify GPL software and make it non-free
  I think that is a guarantee that your code will _stay_ free,
  even after modifications.

* People that are not using the software, have absolutely no rights.
  If I modify my linux kernel on my system, even Linus himself has
  no rights to see.
  Strictly speaking, only users of my computer that runs that kernel
  can force me to give the sources.

Am I wrong in this?

Kurt
Received on Wed Jun 25 2014 - 22:30:28 CEST