*BSD News Article 88767


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From: Timothy Watson <tmwatson@umich.edu>
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.linux.networking,comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.unix.bsd.misc,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: GPL
Date: Sat, 08 Feb 1997 01:22:22 -0500
Organization: University of Michigan
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Timothy Watson wrote:
> What the heck are you saying when talking about
> *published* work? Under what conditions does a company/individual
> lose the right to control the redistribution of modified versions
> of his/her work.
> 
> More examples: IBM BIOS Source Code, Soon-to be released Caldera
> OpenDos source
> 

And the best example: MINIX, free to redistribute for educational
purposes on the condition that is left UNMODIFIED. And Linux was
written from scratch, BTW, and is not a modification of the MINIX
source code.

And I am pretty sure that I have read that Prentice-Hall did come
down like a ton of bricks on some British foundation that was dis-
tributing modified MINIX. (London Users Group or something) So what
if someone modified it, that does not automatically give them the
right to redistribute the modified source under their own terms.
They can supply patches+source code, though.

-Tim Watson