From nickm@cream.org Fri Jan 25 01:55:38 2002
kI have been told that of course, I can stop this person immediately to continue to break my license but I am only able to get a finacial compensation for what this person did illegaly.
No. You seem to think that once their modified version is created, then the best you can expect is some sort of compensation. This is NOT the case. German Law, I'm sure, is similar to other systems whose countries are signatories to the Berne Conventions. As such, they will be required to Cease and Desist from distributing their modified version of your software. This is a very clear copyright issue. I suggest you make it clear to them that you will not be intimidated or bamboozled, and get in touch with Profesor Moglen as soon as possible!
Well so you seem to agree:
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.
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 04:11:43PM +0100, Joerg Schilling wrote:
From nickm@cream.org Fri Jan 25 01:55:38 2002
kI have been told that of course, I can stop this person immediately to continue to break my license but I am only able to get a finacial compensation for what this person did illegaly.
No. You seem to think that once their modified version is created, then the best you can expect is some sort of compensation. This is NOT the case. German Law, I'm sure, is similar to other systems whose countries are signatories to the Berne Conventions. As such, they will be required to Cease and Desist from distributing their modified version of your software. This is a very clear copyright issue. I suggest you make it clear to them that you will not be intimidated or bamboozled, and get in touch with Profesor Moglen as soon as possible!
Well so you seem to agree:
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? :-)
Joerg Schilling wrote:
[..] Well so you seem to agree:
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.
have you read that twice? .. Of course this is not possible - and it never will be. - nowhere!
GPL IS helping keeping your sources free at least in .at (and from your mails i see it's the same situation in .de).
1.) They cannot distribute software based on your source. 2.) They have to face the consequences. Means: Their work is gone, there Customers gone ... if it's like in .at their money is gone (better: its then yours) and their boss could be imprisoned. Use the law luke! 3.) You can make their day in saying: "Open your source or face the court".
Thomas
Joerg Schilling wrote:
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.
It is my understanding of the GPL, it keeps freedom for user receiving the binary to get the source from the people that gave them the binary if some part of it was GPLed.
It does not prevent someone to take a GPL source, change/extend/merge it to produce a binary for his/her own use and never release their work to anyone as long as there is no distribution of the binary.
There are companies that port GCC to their own processor for their own use, such ports will never be made available, this is perfectly within the GPL granted rights and the FSF is well aware of this.
A license forcing anyone using your source to disclose all changes is against what I believe the FSF fights for.
If you're looking for a license forcing anyone editing one of your source to immediately send you the modified sources, I don't believe the GPL is the right one.
But anyway, we don't have enough context to judge what is the exact situation, I hope you'll find help and support from the German "logiciel libre" people.
Sincerely,