Re: Can a recipients rights under GNU GPL be revoked?
Joe writes:
> The whole point of the GPL, of course, was that a Random Large
> Software Company couldn't just buy up code and remove it from the
> market. Even if all the copyright holders were paid enough to remove
> their current code from an open source project, they could not remove
> previous versions, and anyone who wished to do so was free to continue
> development.
That is true of other Open Source licenses such as the BSD license.
The point of the GPL is that if you extend a work distributed to you
under the terms of the GPL you are obligated to distribute your
extensions only under the terms of the GPL (though you are free to not
distribute them at all). This is not true of the BSD license: you are
free to distribute derivatives of BSD licensed software under any terms
at all. This was routinely done: I paid $1000 for BSD-OS for my first
386-based computer.
--
John Hasler
jhasler@newsguy.com
Elmwood, WI USA
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