Evil ideas

Reinhard Müller reinhard.mueller at bytewise.at
Thu Mar 21 09:46:03 UTC 2002


John,

you raise an important issue here.

>  I was wondering - if an evil company got someone to unofficially write some 
> GPL code and that person then released it to the community.  Then wait say a 
> year for everyone to become dependant on it.  Then the evil company yanks it 
> back, revokes the GPL license claiming it was illegal in the first place, 
> then charges lots of money for the program.

The GPL itself answers this.

>From the section "How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs"

"...

You should also get your employer (if you work as a programmer) or your
school, if any, to sign a "copyright disclaimer" for the program, if
necessary.  Here is a sample; alter the names:

  Yoyodyne, Inc., hereby disclaims all copyright interest in the program
  `Gnomovision' (which makes passes at compilers) written by James
Hacker.

  <signature of Ty Coon>, 1 April 1989
  Ty Coon, President of Vice

..."

Unfortunately, the mentioned perl monk appearently didn't read this
paragraph close enough.

Thanks,
-- 
Reinhard Müller                 Tel +43 (5577) 89877-0
BYTEWISE Software GmbH          Fax +43 (5577) 89877-66
A-6890 Lustenau, Enga 2         http://www.bytewise.at
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