[Posted to discussion@fsfeurope.org, CCed license-violation@gnu.org]
Microsoft's copy of the GPL:
ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/developr/interix/gpl.txt
It's last paragraph is,
"That's all there is to it!"
FSF's copy of the GPL:
http://www.fsf.org/licenses/gpl.txt
It's last paragraph is:
"This General Public License does not permit incorporating your program into proprietary programs. If your program is a subroutine library, you may consider it more useful to permit linking proprietary applications with the library. If this is what you want to do, use the GNU Library General Public License instead of this License."
Both list the version as "Version 2, June 1991".
AFAIK (I've only made a quick scan through the documents), this is the only significant change made. Is the alteration made by Microsoft a legitimate one ?
Imran
Imran Ghory a écrit :
[Posted to discussion@fsfeurope.org, CCed license-violation@gnu.org]
Microsoft's copy of the GPL:
ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/developr/interix/gpl.txt
Why is the GPL distributed by Microsoft ?
On 27 Sep 2001, at 22:53, POLLET Fabien @lias ArnaK, In wrote:
Imran Ghory a écrit :
[Posted to discussion@fsfeurope.org, CCed license-violation@gnu.org]
Microsoft's copy of the GPL:
ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/developr/interix/gpl.txt
Why is the GPL distributed by Microsoft ?
Ports of GPL software to Windows 2000 (bc, ci, co, cpio, csplit, dc, diff, diff3, gawk, gzip, gunzip, ident, merge, nl, rcs, rcsdiff, rcsmerge and rlog, there maybe some more)
Imran
On Thursday 27 September 2001 21:53, you wrote:
Imran Ghory a écrit :
Microsoft's copy of the GPL:
ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/developr/interix/gpl.txt
Why is the GPL distributed by Microsoft ?
IIRC, Mircrosoft bought a company called Interix (as in the URL) a while ago (a few years), which included a lot of GPL software in a product they distributed, which is basically a UNIX-> NT migration kit.
Following on from Eben Moglen's article in this month's Linux User (UK), I think it shows the strength of the GPL: if MS were able to get around it, I'm sure they would have by now. Instead, they're complying with it, and making sure that their source is Free - those that say the GPL is on unsound legal ground probably need to argue that with MS's lawyers ;) If Microsoft will comply with it, I think it's on pretty steady ground...
Anyway, the problem is not why MS are distributing Free software compliant with the GPL: it's how we cut this cancer out from our favourite proprietry software provider ;)
Cheers,
Alex.