OT - Closing Off An Open-Source Product

[Chris Watson]

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> what if "hackers" working for a big GPL guy takes your non-GPL'd open
> source code, makes a usually trivial change, and instead of contributing
> the change back to the original author, they redistribute the result as
> their own code, under GPL?

It happens with the BSDL. Of course it's ALLOWED by the GPL. The BSDL is
FREE CODE. Thats the whole point. What good is writing free code if you
dont allow people to use it as much as possible and in as many way's as
you can? It's not free code if they can't use it for whatever purpose.

> has happened to me many times...
> (and for some reason, non-GPL folks never do things like that.  go figure)

Because the License is not free, and unrestricted. It's an embrace and
extend tactic. They take free code and GPL it, killing its free nature.
But I have started adding a new clause to my BSDL code now killing their
ability to do that.

=============================================================================
- -Chris Watson         (316) 326-3862 | FreeBSD Consultant, FreeBSD Geek
Work:              scanner at jurai.net | Open Systems Inc., Wellington, Kansas
Home:  scanner at deceptively.shady.org | http://open-systems.net
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