Re: draft for new Vim license

[Bram Moolenaar <Bram@moolenaar.net>]

Richard Stallman wrote:

>     Because the company I worked for does not allow my work to be distributed
>     outside of the company, and that conflicts with the GPL.
> 
> This is a complete misunderstanding of the GPL.  It does not require
> anyone to release modified versions at all.

The GPL requires the freedom to be *allowed* to distribute the software
to anyone.  The company rules forbid the distribution of the changes to
parties outside of the company.  These two rules conflict.  This causes
confusion, at least, which results in people not being allowed to add
"secrets" to GPL'ed software.

Perhaps your lawyers can say what happens in case of such a conflict.
For example, suppose that a person in a company sends a copy of a GPL'ed
program with "secret" changes to a person outside of the company.  The
sender claims that he is allowed to do that, because the software is
GPL'ed.  The company claims he has broken company rules to keep that
code secret.  Who is right?

So long as this isn't 100% clear, the result is that people won't add
"secrets" to GPL'ed code to avoid this situation.

-- 
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 ///  Bram Moolenaar -- Bram@moolenaar.net -- http://www.moolenaar.net  \\\
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