Microsoft airs tools' source code online

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watch me pull a rabbit out of your post ... its free!

The difference is that if I'm building a large software package and the fyunctionality I find in OS that will help me is something like 5% of it, with GPL my own 95% must be GPLed while with CPL I don't have to.

You need to read the GPLP. Your example is bogus and explictly covered in the GPL. Simply distribute the Whole in two pieces, the 5% GPL and your closed source 95%. GPL just says that when you use someone else's code you have to attribute their contributions and provide the "improved source". Use you own source base to build extensions to a GPL product and you are free to keep it proprietary but you lose out on the network effect of others using your enhancements. Simply shifts the value equation around so that people have to choose to send you money rather than be extorted prior to use.

Verbatim quote from the GPL link you provided:

[blockquote]
These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.

Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on the Program.[/blockquote]

Posted by: oldskool   Posted on: 04/06/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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