bad information on the GPL bad information on the GPL
 

News:

cpg1.5.48 Security release - upgrade mandatory!
The Coppermine development team is releasing a security update for Coppermine in order to counter a recently discovered vulnerability. It is important that all users who run version cpg1.5.46 or older update to this latest version as soon as possible.
[more]

Main Menu

bad information on the GPL

Started by stevek, March 27, 2006, 04:27:10 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

stevek

from your FAQ

Quote
As Coppermine is based on OpenSource software published under GNU/GPL (which allows the modification of the code, but disallows sales of the code, modified or not), you can not purchase a version of coppermine with or without the credit line removed. Read the file COPYING that comes with the distribution of Coppermine for details.

from the GNU GPL FAQ: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLAllowMoney

Quote
Does the GPL allow me to sell copies of the program for money?
    Yes, the GPL allows everyone to do this. The right to sell copies is part of the definition of free software. Except in one special situation, there is no limit on what price you can charge. (The one exception is the required written offer to provide source code that must accompany binary-only release.)

Having searched the forum for this topic coming up before, I discovered: http://forum.coppermine-gallery.net/index.php?topic=23720.0

Which somewhat explains this - as the original developer is out-of-reach, and you haven't assigned copyrights to a central foundation, you cannot dual license the product, with the commercially licensed version allowing removal of your tag line.  (by the way, I believe this "you mustn't remove the ad line is a gpl violation in itself, but I'm not complaining about that really, it seems fair to me) 

However, you could still technically sell the GPL version, so perhaps you might want to reword your FAQ, because the "disallows sales of the code" part is basically completely wrong :)


Joachim Müller

We're aware that the GNU GPL allows you to sell copies. Maybe we're not precise enough in the FAQ: we didn't want to say that you can't sell copies of coppermine at all. We just said that you can't sell copies of coppermine with the copyright tag removed. It wouldn't make sense to me though to sell copies of coppermine core code without any additional features - who should buy something that is available free of charge. Anyway, thanks for pointing out that the FAQ entry is misleading, we'll have to review it and clarify/fix the bit in brackets.