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

Alexandre Oliva
2007-06-15T01:23:09Z

On Jun 14, 2007, Bongani Hlope <bonganilinux@mweb.co.za> wrote:

> On Thursday 14 June 2007 21:32:08 Alexandre Oliva wrote:
>> On Jun 14, 2007, lsorense@csclub.uwaterloo.ca (Lennart Sorensen) wrote:
>> > They let you have the code and make changes to it,
>>
>> Not to the software installed in the device.

> So now you want access to all the software that is installed in
> their device?

What's under the GPL.

> If you buy one of Google's Search Appliance, are you expecting to
> allow you to make changes to the software that is installed on that
> device?

Arguably, if I purchased the device, I ought to be entitled to make
changes to it, yes. But that's a distraction I'd rather not get into
ATM.

> They then make the all the changes to the Linux Kernel available to
> their end users under the same terms that they got from the Linux
> kernel developers.

> What freedom did they take away?

They prevent the user from installing and running modified versions of
the program on the box, while they can still do it themselves on the
same box.

I guess I must have repeated this at least a dozen times in this
thread, so I'll just refrain from repeating this point from now on.

--
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}