On Saturday 17 May 2003 09:31 am, Eric Jahn wrote:
>
> What if Bob, in scenario #4, decides to change his name to "SUSE" and
> then decides to charge more than shipping for his shrink-wrapped
> project? Hasn't Bob/SUSE violated the GPL, even though Bob/SUSE may
> tack on some proprietary plug-ins/enhancements?
>
[snip]
> >
> > 4) Bob sells his modified version of Ogre for $20 dollars, including
> > or at least allowing anyone interested to get the source code for
> > free or for no more than the cost of shipping.
> > Alice finds out, and includes his changes into her own version of
> > Orge.
> >
No. First of all the GPL does not say that you cannot sell GPL'ed software. If
you want to assemble your own distro from all the pieces of the puzzle and
sell it you can. As long as the source code for the GPL'ed parts is made
available.
I used the word *distro* in my repy because I believe in your example above
you picked the name SuSE because you must not like the idea that SuSE charges
for their distro and makes no ISO's available for download. Although I
personally do not use SuSE myself, I must at least say that they have every
right under the GPL to do what they do.
As far as the proprietary plug-ins/enhancements you speak of they are what set
SuSE apart from Red Hat, Mandrake and others and are the property of SuSE and
the other software venders they have agreements with. As long as SuSE makes
the GPL'ed parts of the distro available to you (which they do on their FTP
servers), they are not violating the GPL in any way.
Now if SuSE used (copied) GPL'ed source in their plug-ins/enhancements now
thats a differant story. If they do, then it is *infected* with GPL'ed source
code and must be released under the GPL.
SuSE makes a fine product and they want to be paid for their efforts. I see
nothing wrong with that.
-- R.G. Mayhue r.g.mayhue@verizon.net
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