From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 1025b4,1d8ab55e71d08f3d,start X-Google-Attributes: gid1025b4,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,1efdd369be089610 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: kenner@lab.ultra.nyu.edu (Richard Kenner) Subject: Re: what DOES the GPL really say? Date: 1997/06/25 Message-ID: <5oqp9s$7vj$1@news.nyu.edu>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 252441434 References: <33B014E3.3343@no.such.com> Organization: New York University Ultracomputer Research Lab Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,gnu.misc.discuss Date: 1997-06-25T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: [I've changed the newsgroup from gnu.gcc, which doesn't exist, to gnu.misc.discuss, which is the proper newsgroup to discuss the GPL.] In article <33B014E3.3343@no.such.com> Spam Hater writes: >HOWEVER, several people have said on Usenet or in direct e-mail >that I can use GPL'd source code in my project and still retain >full rights (actually my employer's rights) on the rest of the code. Since you are getting into what is probably the trickiest part of the GPL, we need to be very precise here. Here I'm assuming "use GPL'd source code" means to create a single work that contains both your code and GPL code, not something like using a GPL'd tool such as emacs or gcc to compile you program. In that case, you can indeed do as the people suggested: there is no problem in *creating* such a work, to which both the GPL applies and to which you retain full rights to your own code. >So, if any part of my program contains any part (or derivation of) >their program, I have two choices: >1. Distribute my program "as a whole" under the terms of the GPL >2. Don't distribute my program. That's correct and exactly the status of the resulting work. If you want to continue to view your code as proprietary, then you have two different copyright terms for pieces of the code and the only way to satisfy both is not to distribute the work at all. >(If you play with my ball, you play by my rules.) > >I am sympathetic to the goals of the Free Software Foundation, but I >think that--by trying too hard to coerce other people to make >software "free"--the above paragraph is counter-productive to those >goals. It forces me to re-invent things just so my employers can >say they own them. That may be, but the whole point is that people have spent considerable amount of time, usually without any compensation, to create the GPL'd code in question. They are doing this because they want to help the public in general and don't want their work to be used to help somebody else do something that is against their philosophy. This does not seem particularly unreasonable to me.