Re: Do I have to release the patch for a GPL software under GPL?

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   Now, I, Evil Bill Fence Door, copyright this patch, sell it with
   onerous copy protection, and for $1,000,000 a copy.  The license
   that comes with it prohibits re-distribution of the patch.  Note
   that I'm *not* re-distributing any GPL-licensed software.

But you _modified_ a GPL licensed work (section 2 of the GNU GPL), and
now are distributing the modifications to this work.  It is completely
irrelevant what the form of the patch is, your patch does not work
without the GPLed work, and cannot be used without it so it is a
deriviate work.  To create the patch you modified a GPLed work, so it
is clearly a modification in anyway of the word, how you represent
these modifications are once again completely irrelevant.  Then there
is the fact that your patch requires the GPLed work to be useful.

Also, the following paragraph might apply:

| 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.


I.e. if I wrote a big juciy function to `do the right thing at all
times', I can copyright it under whatever license I want, but _IF_ I
incoperate it by just adding one call to dtrtaat(); somewhere, then I
must license the function under the terms of the GNU GPL as expressed
above.

   Sorry, FSF, there's nothing you can do about this.

Yes there is, you just violated copyright law and a copyright license
by doing so and can be sued by the copyright holder for copyright
infrigment.


There is no point in answering the rest of this message since it is
based on erroneous preconditions about copyright law and the GNU GPL.

Cheers.