[fpc-devel] DOS GUI

[Hans-Peter Diettrich]

Thaddy schrieb:
> Well, I have a statement from their legal dating from 2005 amounting to: 
> "we use it as you intended (sic) and see no reason to quote that this 
> sourcecode is yours. Furthermore, the two units that contain said 
> sourcecode you refer to are protected under U.S. copyright law and are 
> our intellectual property." (It blahblah's a lot more, this is the 
> essence and not verbatum) In other words: closed source.

Well, such companies and lawyers can claim a lot. This is not different 
from other countries, but it may be much more expensive to defend 
against such piracy in the U.S. :-(

At least you know now that your license has been too generous. And your 
case also explains why the open source licenses are so complicated, in 
order to prevent Copyright adicts from hijacking open source code.

> Now you can be right and probably you are right but to be legally right 
> in de U.S. this will cost a lot of funds that I can better use 
> elsewhere. This type of answers is not unique to my case. I believe 
> Henri Gourvest has a rather unique addition to some of his his 
> open-licenced  sourcecode explicitly exluding said company from using it 
> after a similarly bad experience.

Did you contact e.g. the FSF, asking for advice or assistance in your 
case? When that company is known for such illegal practices, they may be 
interested in defending open source principles.

DoDi