From nickm@cream.org Fri Jan 25 16:18:59 2002
While it _is_ possible to stop them to distribute the modified version in binary form, it is not possible to force them to undisclose their part of the source. So GPL gives no special help to enforce the freedom of the sources.
Oh sure, they can hang on to their "modifications" - let us say they changed a line from int fish = 1; to long fish = 1;
They would be able to "keep" the line "long fish = 1;" and that's it. They'd have to agree not to use any of your code. So, what's the point in keeping these "modifications" if they have no right to the thing it modifies? :-)
Which brings us back to german Copyright or better "Authorship Right" basic and shows that you cannot enforce the arrangements from GPL itself.
Jörg
EMail:joerg@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin js@cs.tu-berlin.de (uni) If you don't have iso-8859-1 schilling@fokus.gmd.de (work) chars I am J"org Schilling URL: http://www.fokus.gmd.de/usr/schilling ftp://ftp.fokus.gmd.de/pub/unix
On Fri, Jan 25, 2002 at 04:40:18PM +0100, Joerg Schilling wrote:
From nickm@cream.org Fri Jan 25 16:18:59 2002
While it _is_ possible to stop them to distribute the modified version in binary form, it is not possible to force them to undisclose their part of the source. So GPL gives no special help to enforce the freedom of the sources.
Oh sure, they can hang on to their "modifications" - let us say they changed a line from int fish = 1; to long fish = 1;
They would be able to "keep" the line "long fish = 1;" and that's it. They'd have to agree not to use any of your code. So, what's the point in keeping these "modifications" if they have no right to the thing it modifies? :-)
Which brings us back to german Copyright or better "Authorship Right" basic and shows that you cannot enforce the arrangements from GPL itself.
What "arrangements"? Please define your terms here. I simply can see no desireable outcome for this company other than expense and prohibition. You seem to agree with them that they've found some sort of clever loophole, and yet you fail to demonstrate the practical utility of this loophole!