Re: Dual-Licensing Linux Kernel with GPL V2 and GPL V3

Alexandre Oliva
2007-06-15T02:42:35Z

On Jun 14, 2007, Daniel Hazelton <dhazelton@enter.net> wrote:

> On Thursday 14 June 2007 17:27:27 Alexandre Oliva wrote:
>> On Jun 14, 2007, Daniel Hazelton <dhazelton@enter.net> wrote:
>> > <somewhat sarcastic>
>> > And the companies that produce devices that come with Linux and/or
>> > other GPL'd software installed and place limits such that only
>> > people that have purchased that hardware have access to the
>> > "modified" source running on the device are following the letter,
>> > and the spirit, of the GPL.
>>
>> WAIT, WAIT, THAT'S... :-)
>>
>> > Before you start yelling I'm wrong, think about it this way: they
>> > make the source available to the people that they've given binary
>> > versions to, and there is nothing stopping one of those people from
>> > making the source available to the rest of the world.
>>
>> The *only* in your sentence betrayed you.
>>
>> If they place the limits such that nobody else can access the sources,
>> they're in violation of the license.

> Nope. There is *NO* requirement *ANYWHERE* in the GPL, no matter the version,
> that says you have to *DISTRIBUTE* the source to *ANYONE* except those that
> you have given a binary to. Go read the licenses.

I agree. I even said so.

But the *only* gave me the impression that you were talking about
magic, or any other sufficiently advanced technology ;-), that would
enable the recipients to get the source code, but not usefully pass it
on.

> That is *EXACTLY* what a number of companies have done - Acer (yes,
> the laptop company) has done that. They sell laptops running Linux,
> but unless you have purchased one of them you can't download the
> sources (or even replacement binaries) for the version of linux they
> put on their machines. (From Acer, that is)

That's the sort of stuff that breaks the tit-for-tat premise. GPL
indeed is not concerned about tit-for-tat. It's concerned about
respect for the freedoms.

--
Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
FSF Latin America Board Member http://www.fsfla.org/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}
Free Software Evangelist oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}