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Robert Fulghum's essay, "All I Really Needed to Know, I Learned in Kindergarten," teaches us that we can learn some valuable lessons from the sandbox: Share everything. Play fair. Don't hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don't take things that aren't yours. If only these simple childhood rules could apply to the universe of software licensed under the General Public License, or GPL.
In the GPL universe, "Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this license; they are outside its scope."
Misconceptions, disinformation and innuendo.
Posted by: beaner 2004-10-06 12:12:30 In reply to: Philip H. Albert
Your article makes it sound like anything written to run on GPL software must automatically become GPL if distributed.
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Really. And that's just plain wrong. Either it's just an error, wich isn't very good. Or it's done willingly and then falls in line with SCO, Microsoft and all the other people trying to destroy Open Source Software out of fear to themselves.
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The truth is, if as an independant, you write a program designed to run on Linux then the program is yours to do whatever you want with it without having to show your code to anybody.
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The GPL rules only apply to derivatives, wich normally mean either modifications to an existing program or an inclusion of code from another program. In both these cases, well, If you're taking the code...you have to share yours. It's not too much to ask is it?
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So the bottom line, wich you completely fail to explain is, if you want your code to stay private/hidden/proprietary, just don't use other people's code to write it. If you don't want to keep it secret, then use whatever compatibly licensed code you want and share once your done...
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Lots of companies write programes for GPL'd operating systems, and lots of companies are making money off of that without having to show a single line of their code.
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Is that so somplicated? Did I need a full article to explain it?
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You guys complicate things so much...one has to wonder why?
.
.
Really. And that's just plain wrong. Either it's just an error, wich isn't very good. Or it's done willingly and then falls in line with SCO, Microsoft and all the other people trying to destroy Open Source Software out of fear to themselves.
.
.
The truth is, if as an independant, you write a program designed to run on Linux then the program is yours to do whatever you want with it without having to show your code to anybody.
.
The GPL rules only apply to derivatives, wich normally mean either modifications to an existing program or an inclusion of code from another program. In both these cases, well, If you're taking the code...you have to share yours. It's not too much to ask is it?
.
So the bottom line, wich you completely fail to explain is, if you want your code to stay private/hidden/proprietary, just don't use other people's code to write it. If you don't want to keep it secret, then use whatever compatibly licensed code you want and share once your done...
.
Lots of companies write programes for GPL'd operating systems, and lots of companies are making money off of that without having to show a single line of their code.
.
Is that so somplicated? Did I need a full article to explain it?
.
You guys complicate things so much...one has to wonder why?
