Travis Crump wrote: > By that logic, what is to stop some company from releasing their product > under the 'GPL' and then never releasing the source and requiring > per-seat 'royalties' for the use of their patented IP? That's nonsensical, because source is what you release under GPL. If they don't release source, they haven't released anything under GPL. If they release source under GPL but then demand patent fees later, then they are contradicting themselves. The GPL says clearly that you are allowed to redistribute the source, and distribute binaries built from modified source as long as you make the modified source available. So while you might not be entitled to write new code from scratch implementing the patented IP, you do have permission to use and modify the GPL'd implementation under the terms of the GPL. IANAL, but I have discussed this with RMS, who has quite competent legal advisors for matters like these. Craig
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