[fpc-pascal] Notice: Possible copyright infringements in FPC code base

[Jonas Maebe]

On 17 Jan 2008, at 08:02, Vinzent Hoefler wrote:

> On Wednesday 16 January 2008 17:49, Roberto Padovani wrote:
>
>> Given that I don't have Delphi, suppose that company X ask me to make
>> a software for them. I might give them the software, with full source
>> code and a GPL licence note every here and there, and ask money for
>> the _design_ of the software, instead of the software itself.
>
> Another misunderstanding of the GPL. Of course you are allowed to  
> charge
> money for your software.
>
> But given it is GPL your customer may decide to redistribute the  
> source,
> as you gave him explicit permission with the GPL to do so. It would
> simply put all your other code under GPL, too.

And that is yet another misunderstanding of the GPL: it would *not*  
automatically make all the other code of that program GPL.

If you do not license the rest of the source code under the GPL (or  
under a GPL-compatible license), you are simply infringing on the  
copyright of the author(s) of the GPL code: your are using that code  
in a way which is not allowed by the GPL. You can solve this in two ways
a) license the rest of the source code of that program under the GPL  
or a GPL-compatible license
b) stop distributing the program containing GPL code (and possibly  
replace the GPL code with otherwise licensed code, and then distribute  
the rewritten program)

In any case, whoever receives a program containing a mixture of GPL  
and GPL-incompatible code, is not allowed to further distribute it  
either (because he would infringe on the copyright of author(s) of the  
GPL code just as much as the initial distributor).


Jonas