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From: David on 23 Jun 2010 11:50
There seems to be a lot of good (and woefully ill-informed) comment on
this thread.

If you want to make money from GPL software then all you have to do is
start selling it. Just like propriatary software.

If you redistribute GPL covered binaries you are expected to attribute
this and point people to the source (you don't have to host it).

If you are 'mere aggregation' then that's all you have to do. For
example - you can redistribute Apache Tomcat in a binary bundle if all
your software consists of is a set of JSP/HTML files in a WAR file.

If you modify an existing product, then you should host the source
code and make it available in some way. Again, that all you have to
do. You can even cover reasonable costs in doing this. As has already
been pointed out in this thread, the source code is usually worth very
little - it is the support and expertise a company supplies that
provided the draw.

Finally, try to ignore the hysteria. The GPL is not viral, it isn't
dangerous and it doesn't violate copyright. It is a very simple
license based on a clear understanding of copyright law. There are
numerous products using it (and similar licenses) that make plenty of
money.


From: Bent C Dalager on 23 Jun 2010 19:03
On 2010-06-23, Arved Sandstrom <dcest61(a)hotmail.com> wrote:
> Andreas Leitgeb wrote:
>> Arne Vajhøj <arne(a)vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>>> They lawyers may find it very problematic.
>>
>> IANAL, but sometimes playing devil's advocate:
>>
>> A company could write some useful code, and donate it to
>> public domain. Later, when others have started using it,
>> the company could be taken over, and the new owners may
>> point out, that that previous act of pd-izing was illegal
>> from the beginning and furtheron demand license-fees ...
>>
> Not illegal - there's no law (I think) against doing something which has
> no legal effect.

If the intent was communicated clearly enough then there may be a case
of promissory estoppel or similar. That is, the court may hold that
the original promise must be honoured in spite of it not being part of
a contractual obligation. In this way, making a promise will at times
have a very real legal effect even if the sort of promise given isn't
really backed by any very specific law.

But again you are relying on the good will of the court, which is a
capricious beast at best. The company officers who made the original
promise would probably have been much better served by phrasing it in
a manner that is actually based on an applicable law.

Cheers,
Bent D
--
Bent Dalager - bcd(a)pvv.org - http://www.pvv.org/~bcd
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From: Bent C Dalager on 25 Jun 2010 05:31
On 2010-06-25, Arved Sandstrom <dcest61(a)hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> I think that if employees sign good NDAs and non-competes that if those
> employees then disclose the source code for something on a website that
> this doesn't by itself void the trade secret...provided that other
> measures to protect the secret are in place. That is, if you were not
> shredding confidential paperwork and just left it lying around on desks,
> there was no kind of policy concerning removal of paperwork or flash
> drives from the premises, you had no decent escorted visitor access, and
> your offices were routinely cleaned by custodians who were not vetted,
> that disgruntled employee could go ahead and post all the source for
> your latest in-house app - which has some trade secrets on it - and it
> would possibly be legal for competitors to use that knowledge.

It's difficult to say very much specific about trade secrets because
they are handled very differently in different jurisdictions. In
general, however, if a company can document that they have good
mechanisms in place for keeping a trade secret secret then this will
tend to count in their favour when determining whether the secret has
legally become public.

Conversely, if a company calls something a trade secret but then does
little or nothing to actually protect it their secret will tend to
lose legal trade secret status very fast.

Cheers,
Bent D
--
Bent Dalager - bcd(a)pvv.org - http://www.pvv.org/~bcd
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