Re: cypherpunk license: PLEASE STEAL ME (Re: GPL & commercial software, the critical distinction) (fwd)

[Jim Choate <ravage@EINSTEIN.ssz.com>]

Forwarded message:

> Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1998 03:22:27 +0100
> From: Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk>
> Subject: Re: cypherpunk license: PLEASE STEAL ME (Re: GPL & commercial software, the critical distinction) (fwd)

> Yes, I know, I have read LGPL a few times, and it does include the
> sorts of exceptions you describe.  But I said GPL, and GPL is the
> license which I was suggesting causes problems.  As I said, LGPL is
> sort of useable.

GPL and LGPL both support fully this model of commercial use of L/GPL'ed
code.

> Right, this is the major sticking point for commercial people I find.

I find most commercial people lack imagination, though they make up for it
with a desire for money.

> Yes, but the more interesting, less restrictive case is where they
> really want to modify the code.  cf the example I gave of say adding
> pgp5 compatibility to pgp26ui.

There would be no significant problem if you include the necessary stubs and
make them L/GPL'ed. By both the L/GPL the use of 3rd party code (L/GPL'ed,
PD, or proprietary) hanging off those stubs would NOT be L/GPL'ed.

> I think that if you modify to any significant extent a GPL peice of
> software, and try to sell it you could run into problems.

There is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in the L/GPL that prevents me from selling such
code at whatever price I can manage to charge for it, I could even change it
significantly. I, however, MUST include the source code or provide it for a
reasonable fee if requested by the end user. Your point is irrelevant.

Now if I try to sell it as (my) *copyrighted* code then I'm in for a world of
hurt and justifiably so. This, again, desire to take advantage of others
work is the hallmark of thieves and marketing droids (if there is a
difference between the two).

>  Your legal
> bill for trying to work out how bad it is will be expensive. 

Will be nil. The L/GPL themselves clearly state they don't override previous
copyrights of material that might be used with L/GPL'ed products. That L/GPL
subsumption ONLY applies to code that is built using L/GPL'ed source. In
other words for the L/GPL to be inovked on your code requires that you use
somebodies elses L/GPL'ed code in (NOT with) your code.

This is clearly understood by businesses that do use gcc/egc in that they
use no libraries, headers, etc. from L/GPL sources, develop them in-house or
buy them from 3rd parties. They only use the compiler/linker/tools to get
hooked together.

> If you want to be creative, you could do what you want to it ignoring
> the license, then provide a binary patch from their binary to your
> binary.  Or whatever.  Commercial lawyers are cautious animals though,
> so because you could theoretically hack around things does not mean
> that some company's lawyer is going to recommend that they do it.

The goal of the L/GPL is NOT to stop commercial programming, it is to return
to the end user a level of control and understanding (at least in principle)
so they may build a system to do what they want and not some marketing droid
at a multi-national.

This is NO hack, it is specificaly detailed in the L/GPL as a legitimate use
of such licensed code.

> That aspect of LGPL (availability of source) is useful to the extent
> that it encourages people to make source of the crypto parts
> available.

No, it suggests they should make the API definition available. As to it
being useful, it is critical to the long term stability of systems and the
continued development of imaginative software.

> Use of GNU development tools is a different, and more straight forward
> issue than using GNU licensed code.

Only if you don't understand the L/GPL.

> The point remains: the simplest and best thing to do about licenses if
> you are more concerned about crypto deployment than source
> availability is not to use GPL, and probably to avoid LGPL also.

No, the best thing to do is build your copyrighted libraries and release the
API's via headerfiles or whatever in the GPL'ed code.

> Use BSD, use PD, either is better than GPL for the purpose.

No, they're not because in PD you loose ALL control of your code and if
somebody else uses it in a commercial app or not then you're pretty much
screwed as they laugh their asses off on the way to the bank.

Considering the extend of BSD that would be the last choice of an OS that I
would bank my business on.


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