Re: Is this license free?
Mika Fischer <mika_fischer@gmx.net> writes:
> LICENSE AGREEMENT:
> THIS LIBRARY IS USED BY AN APPLICATION ORIGINALLY DEVELOPED BY THE
> AUTHOR. YOU CAN USE VSLIB UNDER THE LICENSE OF THIS APPLICATION
> ONLY. YOU CANNOT USE THIS LIBRARY AS STANDALONE PRODUCT AND YOU
> ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO RECEIVE IT IN THIS FORM.
This is utterly incompatible with the program being GPLed.
The author himself of course has the right to distribute his work
with meaningless license statements attached. However, as long as
he places this kind of restrictions on part of the program, his
putting the program under GPL is effectively a no-op: the permission
to redistribute the program that GPL grants does not apply when
parts of it is not free.
This means that in practise the author has legally *not* given
everybody the right to distribute his program, even unmodified.
It is probable that he thinks he's done so, though.
> WELL, IF YOU NEED TO MODIFY AND USE VSLIB OR WANT TO USE VSLIB IN
> A WAY THAT IS NOT MENTIONED HERE, YOU MUST REQUEST PERMISSION
> FROM THE AUTHOR! THANK YOU!
> I think we can skip the second part as I received it with an
> application by the author.
No - the Debian Free Software Guidelines requires that anyone must
be allowed to modify the program and distribute his modified versions.
This concept of modification includes, for example, the act of
removing all of the source sode except the library, then modifying
the libraray further and building a new main program around it.
> So is this license free or not?
Definitely not.
--
Henning Makholm
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