GPL - possible violation - what should I do?

Claus Färber list-fsf-eu-discussion at faerber.muc.de
Wed Mar 20 13:57:00 UTC 2002


Jan Wildeboer <jan.wildeboer at gmx.de> schrieb/wrote:
> Interesting - Free software can violate antitrust laws? Can you
> construct a theoretical example? Just curious :-)

Consider this: Apache changes the licence to GPL. As Apache has a  
large market share, 3rd party vendors for WWW server solutions  
would have to make their products compatible with Apache.

However, taken the GPL literally, they could not, for example,  
write a plugin like mod_fancy_shopping_solution and release that  
under a proprietary licence.

So proprietary software vendors could not access that market,  
giving an competive advantage to Open Source software vendors.

Claus
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