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Re: Debian based GNU/Solaris: pilot program



On Thu, 03 Nov 2005 12:48:53 -0800, Erast Benson <erast@gnusolaris.org> said:

> On Thu, 2005-11-03 at 12:18 -0800, Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote:
>> The GPL does not force developers to "contribute their changes back".
>> That's exactly the *point*.

> Explain please.

> Lets assume you have GPL-ed project dpkg. Any change to foo.c must be
> contributed back to the community. ...

Only if you distribute a binary based on the changed foo.c.  And only if
someone asks you for the sources.

If you keep the binary to yourself, you don't have to release anything.

> Also GPL-ed dpkg could be easily distributed as a binary if it is not
> part of the system. The way KDE and other GPL-ed software distributed
> in projects like www.blastwave.org, cygwin, etc.

> CDDL works similar way, except on per-file basis.

And as Matthew has repeatedly pointed out, this will not help with
getting dpkg dual-licensed, since several dpkg copyright holders
probably do not want that.

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