[Gnu-arch-users] re: license question

[Thomas Lord]

>> Centos can take my GNU Hello sources, compile them, and distribute
>> those binaries (assuming they make source available and take pains
>> to exclude my additional file with restrictive copyright).

> Do you want to distribute a GPLd program along with a (more or less
> _needed) additional file, which is under restrictive copyright?  In
> this case, you'll probably have to play some games to make _your_
> distribution of sources comply with GPL...

I'll put my restricted file in a separate subdirectory where it can
also be used by other programs.   I claim that I am merely aggregating
my file with the GNU hello sources, not combining them to form a 
derived work.

I'll add a feature to GNU hello, a "--show-branding" option, which 
reads and prints this file if it is present and otherwise prints
"feature disabled".   If I eventually have a corporate trademark,
I'll put that in the file -- all the more basis for suing careless
redistributions.

The key thing for Centos is that I want to make it inconvenient to
simply redistribute my the tar-bundle of source.   They must first
"disaggregate" GNU hello from my file.   They'll have to modify the
top-level Makefile which will expect the file to be there.   If they
want some behavior other than "feature disabled", they'll have to 
add a new file of their own design.

However, again: I want to claim that this is mere aggregation of
works, not combination.   If anyone asks, I can say this is is 
exactly like distributing a free software image viewer along with
a collection of non-free photographs.

And, again, this presumes that Centos can get their hands on my
source at all.   I'm only under obligation to provide it to my
customers.   They certainly have no incentive to share it with
potential competitors -- better those competitors should run the
inferior upstream distributions.  And I doubt my customers will 
want to take on the trouble and expense of scrubbing the source 
tree of my non-free materials.

So this can all work out rather nicely:  without paying for labor
I get a nice free software program.  I add a little bit of labor
to turn it into a branded version of the program which can't be
directly redistributed.  Because customers are subscribing to my
joke service, I get to charge them a per-CPU license fee and 
prohibit them from freely copying and using the source themselves.
And all of this is based on business models that at least one other
company is already using!

And really, this is just the start.   It still bugs me that customers
will be able to examine and even modify the source code.   But perhaps
that is easily fixed too.   After all, if a customer modifies the code
it is harder for me to audit them for license compliance -- so I could
add a clause saying that if they modify the code they owe me an
additional $1M per CPU -- it's a support fee, don't ya know.  Ok, so
they can still examine the source but undermining 3 out of 4 software 
freedoms isn't bad and, anyway, even Microsoft sometimes let's people 
see the source.



- ("Dr. Evil") t