GPL Questions

[Paul Carter]

I hope this isn't an inappropriate message here. I wasn't able to find
a FAQ for this newsgroup. Please let me know if there's a more
appropriate group.

Where I work, we are considering using a small piece of the JIDE
Common Layer Open Source Project (https://jide-oss.dev.java.net/).
It's under a dual GPL/Commerical license.

The second FAQ in the link above states:
<quote>
  2. If I modify your source code to fix a bug or add an enhancement,
should I contribute the change back to you?

  As a matter of fact, you must contribute the changes back to us
either [sic] you choose GPL or free commercial license to comply with
the license agreements.
</quote>

This is not my understanding of the GPL. This link
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLRequireSourcePostedPublic

seems to contradict JIDE's answer. If our changes are only used
internally, we do not have to give them back to JIDE.  Is this a
correct reading?

Actually, we're just tweaking the code a bit (changing it's package
mostly) so they really wouldn't want our changes anyway.

A related question. We also occasionally give out our source code to
other companies. We do give them all the source. Does this require us
to give back changes to JIDE? I think the answer is no.

Thanks,

Paul