GPL specifics -- was: [Nel] Gamer question

[Vincent Archer]

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)