On Saturday 02 April 2005 11:05, Devdas Bhagat wrote:
In effect the commercial distros companies are providing expertise not just software and they are fully justified in charging what ever they please. And you can have a completely legal parasitic existence by the above methods. In fact you can provide better services and charge more (after RTFM) than them.
rgds jtd
A couple of points that you appear to have missed. The GPL concerns itself with source code. Not binaries, not support, nothing else.
Nope. You are eliminating the case of derived work. It does concern itself with binaries too. A binary is a derived work of the source - as are modifications, bugfixes, enhancements etc. Therefore the terms of the gpl apply to the binaries too. Also "distributing" includes putting a binary into a flash rom and sticking it inside your gizmo and selling the gizmo. (I had too do some talking with some distributors of embedded products here on this issue.) This action (selling the gizmo) is distribution and requires gpl compliance. Therfore source code must be made available. You can make copies of the binary hex file from the prom and use as you deem fit without any copyright violation. Even if "opening this parcel means that you agree" to whatever. The reason is that the gpl licence has given you a right the moment the act of giving and taking takes place. Adding wrappers - physical or software does not change the fact of distribution. There is no way that anyone (RH, Novell, Microsod whoever) can circumvent this - thank god.
Linux distributors take the GPLed source, package it, build it into binaries, and test those. That is a service. RedHat et al charge for that service.
When you "buy" RedHat ES/AS versions, you are paying for their compiling and testing services, not for the software itself. This _support_ purchase is a contract, which states that you may not install the software from those binaries on more than one system.
That is a violation of the gpl and will not stand in a law court. I have not read the contract but if you have one please post it. We can takeon redhat on this. The binary IS a derived work of the source. If the source is gpld so is the binary.
It has no conditions on the sources, other than the license the code shipped with (GPL/MPL/anything else).
RedHat will not stop you from building your own RPMs from source, and installing those, so long as you do not redistribute RedHats trademarked material along with those.
If the logo is part of the binary there could be a potential problem as you cannot compile in non gpl code along with gpld code. I am not sure that the logo = code. My guess is that the court will rule in favour of the logo and hold cloners liable if they do not remove the logo. Which IMO is very fair to the trademark holders.
If you do not want to pay RedHat, you can download their source RPMs and then build your own distribution. When you are doing so, you have to remove RedHats trademarks and logos, since you are not RedHat. You can replace those with your own logos if you want.
Also, there is generally no non-copyrighted material in a Linux distribution. All the software is copyright to its author(s).
organisation for full driver support and manual reference. I am not against companies that charge or make money. I try my best to encourage people to buy legal software and did manage to convince a few. I use legal software in my comps even though its very easy to use the pirated ones. What I don't like is the unnecessary hype about linux being free
Linux itself is free to redistribute, as source code.
And binaries too as binary=derivative of source.
rgds jtd
On 02/04/05 11:39 +0500, sherlock@vsnl.com wrote:
On Saturday 02 April 2005 11:05, Devdas Bhagat wrote:
In effect the commercial distros companies are providing expertise not just software and they are fully justified in charging what ever they please. And you can have a completely legal parasitic existence by the above methods. In fact you can provide better services and charge more (after RTFM) than them.
rgds jtd
A couple of points that you appear to have missed. The GPL concerns itself with source code. Not binaries, not support, nothing else.
Nope. You are eliminating the case of derived work. It does concern itself with binaries too. A binary is a derived work of the source - as are modifications, bugfixes, enhancements etc.
The GPL only states that in case of derived work, the source code must be made available. Like I said, the GPL is only concerned with ensuring that source code is always available for distributed GPLed software.
Therefore the terms of the gpl apply to the binaries too. Also "distributing" includes putting a binary into a flash rom and sticking it inside your gizmo and selling the gizmo. (I had too do some talking with some distributors of embedded products here on this issue.) This action (selling the gizmo) is distribution and requires gpl compliance. Therfore source code must be made
Right. However, the effort of putting the binary into the Gizmo is chargable. As is the hardware.
available. You can make copies of the binary hex file from the prom and use as you deem fit without any copyright violation. Even if "opening this parcel means that you agree" to whatever. The reason is that the gpl licence has given you a right the moment the act of giving and taking takes place. Adding wrappers
- physical or software does not change the fact of distribution.
There is no way that anyone (RH, Novell, Microsod whoever) can circumvent this - thank god.
But RedHat is not trying to circumvent this.
Linux distributors take the GPLed source, package it, build it into binaries, and test those. That is a service. RedHat et al charge for that service.
When you "buy" RedHat ES/AS versions, you are paying for their compiling and testing services, not for the software itself. This _support_ purchase is a contract, which states that you may not install the software from those binaries on more than one system.
That is a violation of the gpl and will not stand in a law court.
No it isn't. The RedHat contract has been FSF approved. RedHat _charges_ for their effort in building a binary. They are saying that they will build a binary for you provided that you do not redistribute it....
This is a separate argument from the GPL itself. The contract is for the effort that RedHat puts into building the distribution.
To put it another way, RedHat provides binaries as a service to its customers. They charge for that service. They have an additional clause in the service contract that states that you may not redistribute the binaries. This is part of the service contract, and does not constitute a violation of the GPL itself.
I have not read the contract but if you have one please post it. We can takeon redhat on this. The binary IS a derived work of the source. If the source is gpld so is the binary.
Distributing the binary would be a violation of your support contract. It is not a GPL violation. This is in the area of contract law, not copyright law. RedHat does not impose additional restrictions on redistribution via copyright/EULAs. It does impose restrictions via contract, a contract which you willingly enter into when you purchase support from RedHat.
It has no conditions on the sources, other than the license the code shipped with (GPL/MPL/anything else).
RedHat will not stop you from building your own RPMs from source, and installing those, so long as you do not redistribute RedHats trademarked material along with those.
If the logo is part of the binary there could be a potential problem as you cannot compile in non gpl code along with gpld code. I am not sure that the logo = code. My guess is that the court will rule in favour of the logo and hold cloners liable if they do not remove the logo. Which IMO is very fair to the trademark holders.
Right. The logo is data, and is not essential to the running of the code.
If you do not want to pay RedHat, you can download their source RPMs and then build your own distribution. When you are doing so, you have to remove RedHats trademarks and logos, since you are not RedHat. You can replace those with your own logos if you want.
Also, there is generally no non-copyrighted material in a Linux distribution. All the software is copyright to its author(s).
organisation for full driver support and manual reference. I am not against companies that charge or make money. I try my best to encourage people to buy legal software and did manage to convince a few. I use legal software in my comps even though its very easy to use the pirated ones. What I don't like is the unnecessary hype about linux being free
Linux itself is free to redistribute, as source code.
And binaries too as binary=derivative of source.
Binaries _are_ free to redistribute. However, if you sign a contract and give up that right, the contract does dominate.
Devdas Bhagat
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Devdas Bhagat -
sherlock＠vsnl.com