GPL specifics -- was: [Nel] Gamer question

Fri, 14 Dec 2001 10:19:52 +0100

According to Kai Schutte:
+> On Thursday 13 December 2001 09:49, Vincent Archer wrote:
+> > Whenever you get a GPLed program (and the license on the NeL library
+> > is such that a program linked to it must be GPL too), under any form,
+> > you must also be able to access/request/get a copy of the source.
+> >
+> > So anybody who has a Ryzom client has the right to access the source.
+> >
+> > Of course, until there IS an official client, almost no one outside
+> > Nevrax has that right :)
+> 
+> I don't want to drag this out eternally, but I see a little lapse of 
+> reasoning. Technically speaking, the development version of Ryzom is probably 
+> currently being linked and tested with NeL, therefore, Ryzom must inherit the 
+> GPL. 
+> Therefore, the current development code is in the public domain, therefore 
+> should be published. Of course, I understand your need to keep Ryzom "secret" 
+> until it is done, releasable and sellable, so that you can put food on your 
+> plates (and buy big cars for your Venture Capital people), yet, isn't this 
+> secrecy a violation of the GPL, since Ryzom is GPL'd?
+
+It is not. A violation that is.
+
+I know the GPL is an awful amount of legalese, and, like any legal-jargon
+document, people chiefly know its intent, and not its phrasing.
+
+But the GPL does not force you to release anything.
+
+What the GPL forces you is that, *if* you release any GPL program/library,
+its sources MUST be available (and describes the minimum requirement for
+this availability, i.e. you can't claim the sources are available but you
+need to come to the Tuvalu Islands, wait 3 months of quarantine, and read
+them on a dot-matrix printer listing with surgical gloves on).
+
+Note the "if".
+
+As long as *you* don't have a Ryzom client, *you* are not entitled to ask
+for the sources. A company may very well decide to take a GPL piece of
+software, and use it to write a program it uses internally, and no one
+can come up front and ask for that program's sources. If the company
+uses it internally only, the only legal obligation of source disclosure
+is to the people who have the program, i.e. its own employees.
+
+Of course, the example shown above works as long as the program remains
+inside. Other parts of the GPL allow any employee to pick the internal
+programs, use it to write its own GPL variation, and distribute said
+variation outside of the company, distributing the base source in the
+same way, and there's nothing the company could do to prevent exposure.
+
+But, in Nevrax's case, it's not important, since the program will end
+up available to the public, and when it does, the sources will be.
+
+> Wouldn't it be better then, for Nevrax, if NeL was LGPL, and thereby making 
+> it legal (or rather, in accordance to the GPL) for you to keep Ryzom from 
+> public eyes? 
+
+As long as no one outside of Nevrax has Ryzom, the strictures of the GPL
+are respected.
+
+Yeah, I know, we're impatient :)
+-- 
+	Vincent Archer			Email:	archer@frmug.org
+
+All men are mortal.  Socrates was mortal.  Therefore, all men are Socrates.
+							(Woody Allen)
+
+