From: Laurent Guerby guerby@acm.org
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.
I don't know what you did understand from PGL, but GPL definitely states that if you modify source _and_ make it available in binary form you need to undisclose the complete source too (which includes your changes).
I don't know what FSF currently fights for, in former times they definitely did fight for what I noted in the paragraph above.
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
Joerg Schilling wrote:
I don't know what you did understand from PGL, but GPL definitely states that if you modify source _and_ make it available in binary form you need to undisclose the complete source too (which includes your changes).
My point was the "and make it available in binary", we're in agreement then. No binary distributed => no legal obligation to disclose the source of modifications. I assume now (I may have missed it from your previous emails, sorry about that) that *a binary was indeed distributed* in your case.
If people have taken your GPL code, modified it and *distributed a binary* then they will probably be stopped from distributing the binary. Once you get the court to stop their distribution of the binary, they might have to pay you some damage and/or set an agreement with you, like publishing their modification :).
I doubt someone having received the binary can get automatic access to the source of modifications: imagine that the infringing company X merged some sources from author A with your GPL source. A might not have granted X the right to disclose the source, just the right to use it in a binary so it would be logical not to disclose A sources because it would cause undue damage to A on behalf of to X misbehaviour with your sources.
If X = A, I don't know if a judge has the power to force the author to disclose the modification under the GPL, the judge power might be limited to monetary damage payments, that is definitely something you have to ask to copyright lawyers.
There's also probably nothing GPL specific there, it's just a generic copyright on software legal problem since software has two "copyrightable" forms: source and binary, one of those being not really interesting to authors and readers. Very interesting case then :).
But that's just pushing "common sense justice" logic, and IANAL :).
If it goes to court and at this point with FSFE and/or EFF and that you need funding, I'll be happy to contribute a few euros.
Sincerely,