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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!lucy.swin.edu.au!news.rmit.EDU.AU!news.unimelb.EDU.AU!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!feed1.news.erols.com!news-xfer.netaxs.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news.bc.net!rover.ucs.ualberta.ca!gpu4.srv.ualberta.ca!not-for-mail From: jgg@gpu4.srv.ualberta.ca (J Gunthorpe) Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.linux.networking,comp.os.linux.setup,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.unix.bsd.misc,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy Subject: Re: Linux vs whatever Followup-To: comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.linux.networking,comp.os.linux.setup,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.unix.bsd.misc,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy Date: 28 Jan 1997 22:47:53 GMT Organization: University of Alberta Lines: 31 Message-ID: <5clvmp$jjs@pulp.ucs.ualberta.ca> References: <32DFFEAB.7704@usa.net> <5qC7y0gTzDLB091yn@ibm.net> <5ciraf$gs@cynic.portal.ca> <32EE0B70.1657@ml.com> <5claa2$jq1@cynic.portal.ca> NNTP-Posting-Host: gpu4.srv.ualberta.ca X-Newsreader: TIN [UNIX 1.3 950824BETA PL0] Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.misc:154811 comp.os.linux.networking:66466 comp.os.linux.setup:94365 comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc:5772 comp.unix.bsd.misc:2085 comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy:51243 comp.os.os2.advocacy:264079 Curt Sampson (cjs@cynic.portal.ca) wrote: : On Tue, 28 Jan 1997, tethys wrote: : : > How? By placing it under the GPL, they ensured it will be free for : > anyone to use, and port to new platforms if desired. : : Only as a separate program. It can't, for example, be integrated : into WinZip or PKZIP (without forcing the author to give away full : source code for WinZip or PKZIP), which would automatically give : it much, much wider distribution. Nor could a word processor be : able automatically to gzip files, for the same reason. : : It may be reasonable in some people's minds to say that if you take : a one thousand line GPL'd program and make fifty lines of changes, : you must give away those changes. But I should think hardly anyone : would think it reasonable to say that if you integrate five hundred : lines of GPL'd source into a ten thousand line program you wrote : yourself, you must now give away those ten thousand lines of code : you wrote. Yet that's exactly what the GPL says. Hm, that does sound pretty bad, and does limit the usefullness of the GLP'd code. However I have a question, if you take a GPL'd code base and make it into a library (shared or otherwise) and then link to that library is it required to distribute the code of the new executable? If this is so, then how can anyone make any money in linux? I assume stuff like the X-Windows libraries, shared C libraries, Sockets libs etc etc are all GPL'd? (In which case wouldn't NetScape, ID and others be violating the GPL by releasing ported code that runs on linux without source?) Jason