Privately relicensing GPL’d software

[Fred Phillips]

Boxee[1] is a piece of software based on XBMC[2] which is realeased
under the GPL. The only way to receive the source for Boxee is to take
part in a private alpha test which is by invite only. The code they
distribute to these selected people is not under the GPL. They claim
to be able to do this as it is not “public distribution”. I would have
assumed that they are not obliged to release their code publicly if
they are not distributing it publicly, but they would need to release
it under the GPL to those within their organisation who it is
distributed to. Am I correct? This is also being discussed in the
Boxee forums[3].

[1] http://boxee.tv
[2] http://xbmc.org
[3] http://forum.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=382

-- 
Fred O. Phillips
http://fophillips.org
BBC7 7572 755F 83E0 3209  504A E4F7 874F 1545 9D41

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