Re: Is this alowed?

Charlie Brady wrote:

>On Mon, 29 Dec 2003, Richard Morrell wrote:
>
>  
>
>>I am guilty of this - wholesale.
>>    
>>
>
>That's an interesting public admission.
>  
>
Thats why I made it, its not an admission - SW doesn't breach the GPL, 
what it does do is not clearly make available modifications. What it 
should do is have a CVS for GPL bits that are auditable. What made me 
uneasy was the fact that there are issues in any GPL based application 
where there are grey areas of code touching code under seperate 
licencing issues. It is not enough for SuSE, or SW or any Linux co 
saying that they will backport after time mods where the line between 
OSI code and a minimal 5 line modification makes that proprietary.

Unfortunately it doesn't matter. The GNU GPL is for us to self police. 
The reality is that Brad, Richard and the team at FSF have no funds to 
police. Their organisation is very poor and its purely down to the 
support of the community and the need for us as individuals to hold it 
in reverence that the whole thing doesn't fall apart. There are three 
companies I know of breaching the GPL in major fashion who have ignored 
wholesale requests for compliance because they see a letter from the FSF 
legal people as less threatening than a demand to pay from the company 
who ship their bottled office water.

A paper tiger only has so much muscle. Self policing and respect for 
peer review and common sense and seeing how OSI approved licences aid 
our own growth is all thats needed. Basing revenue is easy once you have 
a platform.

Dick

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