[ale] Time to stir the pot

[Michael Trausch]

On 01/05/2012 06:58 AM, Jim Kinney wrote:
> He harps on gnu because some other floss licenses allow a coporate
> takeover with no give back. Thus the gpl v3.

Well, the GPL allows it, too (even v3), just not in all the cases that
other licenses do.  As an example, if a corporation uses a GPL licensed
product internally, they do not have to provide source code to the
employees (because internal usage doesn't count as "distribution", at
least here, because "distribution" requires that something be conveyed
between organizations as opposed to internally).

So, while it can happen that a company improves or modifies a GPL
program without making its changes available, the only reason that it
doesn't have to is that it isn't distributing the binaries to third
parties, but retaining it for internal use only.  This makes the scope
very limited, but that works out alright for a company that wants to
keep their modificiations private.

In practice, I'm not sure that it's terribly wise to do so.  An employee
could very easily make the mistake that it's GPL licensed software and
that means that they could distribute it to a third party without worry.
 But they could find themselves fired if they force the corporation to
publish it's modified version without someone approving distribution.

The fact that the GPL only comes into play at "distribution" time makes
that all possible.

	--- Mike

-- 
A man who reasons deliberately, manages it better after studying Logic
than he could before, if he is sincere about it and has common sense.
                                   --- Carveth Read, “Logic”

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