Re: Making code available & license (was Re: Examles from apple webobjects 5.4.3 any good)
Re: Making code available & license (was Re: Examles from apple webobjects 5.4.3 any good)
- Subject: Re: Making code available & license (was Re: Examles from apple webobjects 5.4.3 any good)
- From: Ramsey Gurley <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 10:28:45 -0700
On May 12, 2011, at 8:43 AM, Dov Rosenberg wrote:
> Depends if you want to make money from your app or not. In either case the license that you release your app under can't violate the terms of any of the components included in your app. If you included GPL licensed components – it would be a violation of the GPL license to charge money for your app. See the note from the GPL v2 license below
>
>
> 2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion
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> of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and
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> distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1
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> above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:
>
>
> …
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>
> b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in
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> whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any
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> part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third
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> parties under the terms of this License.
>
>
I'm sorry... am I misreading something?
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html
That section is based on the opening statement. I'm not a lawyer, but I like to believe I have a pretty firm grasp of the english language. As far as I can tell, 2 b) only applies if you first "modify your copy or copies of the Program".
Nowhere does it state that including a GPL'ed binary library in your app forbids you from selling your own code under any license you see fit. To further clarify 2 a) b) and c), the license immediately follows with:
"These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works"
Regarding the article you linked to, I don't see any mention of OSS or GPL anywhere. It appears to be an article about piracy of commercial enterprise software. I certainly didn't see any corroborating information or case law which would interpret the above statements as: "it would be a violation of the GPL license to charge money for your app"
Ramsey
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