On Fri, Jul 28, 2000 at 12:05:27PM +0200, Bernhard R. Link wrote: > > Essentially GPL says: > > > > 1) you must give your source to those you give binaries, but > > 2) you must give your rights to everyone. > > I understood, that you have only give rights to all these, that receive > source or binaries directly or indirectly by you. > > If I modify some program written by you. And give it only give it persons, > from which I know, they will not distribute it further. (Wihtout me > forcing them to or making a licence "you are only allowed to use, when > ...". Would I have to give rights of the modified form to you? The "rights" in question are copyright. Authors retain copyright in derived works whether or not they know about them. You get your own copyright on your modifications when they are sufficiently novel to qualify as an original work of their own. There are few hard and fast rules for determining this; it's typically determined by agreement between the parties, or a court case. The GPL, however, does not compel you to distribute your modifications back to the author specifically. If you distribute source with your binaries, you do not have to give your modifications to anyone in particular. If you do not distribute source with your binaries, then you must give the source to any third party who requests them within a period of 3 years after your distribution of the binaries. See the GPL more info. -- G. Branden Robinson | If you have the slightest bit of Debian GNU/Linux | intellectual integrity you cannot branden@debian.org | support the government. http://www.debian.org/~branden/ | -- anonymous
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