Re: GPL and software I have written
On Wed, 1 Nov 2000, Brooks R. Robinson wrote:
> I have a dilemma, and I expect this to end in a flame war, but
> here goes...
Hmmm. Ok, "you're ugly, and your mother dresses you funny."
> I have issues with my employer that cause me to not want to
> merely hand over my work. I have never released/published any
Yes. Merely not owning the company is sufficient issues for that :}
> I would like confirmation. Since I am not modifying any existing
> software, I am creating new software, I can charge for the new
> software. This could be a license fee or something.
The copyright owner can do whatever he wants with his own code. This
includes licensing it to some people under one license and licensing it to
others under the GPL (MySQL works this way, as does Quake).
You can always charge for GPL software. Well, you cannot charge for the
software itself, but you can charge for the act of distributing it. Such
charge is not necessarily limited to the actual distribution costs. So
you can charge $500 for a CD of your software whether it is GPL or
not. But you cannot restrict anyone you distribute software to from
further redistributing it, for any or no cost. In the case where the
distribution itself is a valued service, people will often pay for that -
such as the case with Linux distributions.
> a computer). Mini-SQL has it's own license (NON GPL) that they would
> have to purchase separately (I developed this as a student, so I am
> not require to pay money for a license, but they would as a commercial
> site/use).
You could always convert your system to use Postgres, mSQL, or MySQL (now
that MySQL has transactions it is suitable even for ecommerce use).
> In essence, I am providing them C code, which they can compile
> and execute. Am I in the ballpark or have I gone off the deep end?
You're fine :}
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