|
I have a couple questions about the
GPL.
I work for a company that builds embedded hardware
and a customer of ours wanted to sell us a patch to a GPL'ed piece of
code. This modification was designed and sold to our customer by
another Linux service contracter for what I guess was a lot of money. The
issue is now moot since we engineered our own solution to the problem, but I
have found myself somewhat curious as to the details of when GPL'ed code must be
released to the public.
For instance, our customer says they don't have to
release the source code until if/when they would ever release a product based on
it-- but what actually classifys a "product"? I could almost
believe the contracter liable to release the code since they sold it as a
deliverable to a service contract or perhaps our actual
customer since they're trying to sell us the patch? (The "product"
being the actual patch against GPL code) Is anybody in
violation?
It is no secret that a lot of our customers do not
like the GPL and want to find ways around the license by abusing the "product"
and "internal use" clauses. As a hypothetical situation, whats to prevent
our company from reclassifying itself as a service company (e.g.
you're not buying a hardware "product" from us, you're contracting our
services to build you a circuit board that you can use in your own product
so you have to buy the GPL code from us through another service contract),
and/or reclassifying our customers as "partners" and using the "internal use"
clause to never release GPL sources?
Not that we would do any of this since the GPL
works well for us, but honestly- if its possible, I would gratuitously recommend
such GPL "work-arounds" to potential customers that are hesitant on
using our product because of fear of GPL infringment. While we understand
the spirit of the GPL and we are more than happy to abide by that at our
own company (it actually works well for us), we do not completely understand the
subtleties of the letter of the GPL. We were actually just quite taken
aback by someone trying to sell us GPL'ed code.
//Jesse Off
| 