Re: GNU licenses

[David Kastrup]

mike4ty4@yahoo.com writes:

> John Hasler wrote:
>> David Kastrup writes:
>> > But the one thing that you can't do is take his material and do with
>> > it as you like without heeding its license.
>>
>> mike4ty4 writes:
>> > But why forbid it?
>>
>> To increase the amount of Free software in the world.  You may
>> choose not to participate.
>>
>
> Well, I can make both free and non-free software, at least I should
> be able to.

You are.  You just can't use free software of the GPL variety for
making non-free software.

> I guess that means just to steer clear of GNU code for the non-free
> projects.

Certainly.

> Which raises another question: What happens if I learn something
> from the GNU software, like a "trick" or a more efficient way of
> programming some algorithm? If I use that METHOD/KNOWLEDGE even if
> not the ORIGINAL CODE does this mean I have to GNU?

Copyright concerns a particular expression, not the idea behind it.
Restricting access to ideas is the area of patents, not copyright.

In order to be sure that no copyrightable expression from a good idea
remains, large companies employ a "cleanroom" tactic: one team
analyses the copyrighted code, and then writes a specification for it.
A different team without access to the original code then rewrites the
code from specification.  If the whole is done in a well-documented
way, it is likely to hold up in court.

>> > why do you want to make other people's code free as a "price" for
>> > using "free" code?
>>
>> Why do you want to make people give you money as a "price" for
>> using your code?
>
> Because I need the money, for one. One can't do much without money.

Well, so why do you want to make money off the work of others without
recompensating them?  You are free to write to the copyright holders
of the GPLed software and negotiate a different license, and pay for
that privilege.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum