AMIOPEN: Linux, free software and its industry. (Was: Loki Software seems to have filed for bankruptcy.)

[zscoundrel]

Wow, tht's gets into a real murky area.  I am not a lawyer, but I
believe that the act of installing the software on the machines for
lease would be considered an act of distribution for profit - and that
usually is where the licensing requirements kick in.  (Note, In this
case profit may not be just a monetary consideration. )  Again, if your
code is modifications to the OS itself, by rights you should release it
to the group that manages standards.  They may feel it is a really great
modification and include it in future releases.

Note:   They may also decide that it conflicts with certain functions
and  not use it - but at least you have FULLY complied with the license
agreements and can do what you like with the code and continue to
compile you own OS for the machine you lease.

The idea is to keep any one organization or individual from being able
to exert ANY control over the use of the operating system.  If you write
any code for the OS that improves or modifies it in any way, you need to
release it to everyone.  This is designed to keep some nefarious
software company from writing an API and controlling the how we use the
software via control over the API or a number of unreleased OS
modifications.

Monty Harder wrote:

> 8/18/01 5:26:03 PM, Mike Coleman <mkc at mathdogs.com> wrote:
>
>>> source if you don't "distribute" object code.  IANAL, so I don't begin to
>>> understand where The Line is between simply using code and "distributing" it,
>>> but I'm sure there is something very important about this wording.
>>
>> Yes.  My guess is that they want individual users personally using their own
>> code to have great latitude and that they want development teams to do
>> development without necessarily having to distribute source to all of the
>> intermediate versions.
>
>
>   So how's this for a scenario:  A company installs modified GPLed software on computers that it 
owns, but leases to
> customers.  Have they "distributed" anything?
>
>
>
>
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>

--
At 20, I was liberal, because I had nothing to lose and so much to gain.
by 40, I was conservative, because I had so much to lose and so little to gain.
Isn't it amazing what 20 years of hard work and experience will do for ones' point of view?