Copyleft/guide Changeset - 831c21febb29

Changeset - 831c21febb29

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enyst - 10 years ago 2014-09-19 22:09:46
engel.nyst@gmail.com

Strictly speaking, for proprietary relicensing 'only' unconditional permissions are needed.

Signed-off-by: enyst <engel.nyst@gmail.com>

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 demands industry trust. Companies can cooperate on the software and
 improve it for everyone. Meanwhile, companies who rely on GCC for their
 work are happy to pay for improvements, and for ports to new target
 platforms. Nearly all the changes fold back into the standard
 versions, and those forks that exist remain freely available.
 \medskip
 \label{Proprietary Relicensing}
 A final common business model that is perhaps the most controversial is
 proprietary relicensing of a GPL'd code base. This is only an option for
 software in which a particular entity is the sole copyright holder. As
 discussed earlier in this tutorial, a copyright holder is permitted under
 copyright law to license a software system under her copyright as many
 different ways as she likes to as many different parties as she wishes.
 software in which a particular entity is the sole copyright holder or has
 unconditional relicensing permissions. As discussed earlier in this tutorial,
 a copyright holder is permitted under copyright law to license a software
 system under her copyright as many different ways as she likes to as many
 different parties as she wishes.
 Some companies use this to their
 financial advantage with regard to a GPL'd code base. The standard
 version is available from the company under the terms of the GPL\@.
 However, parties can purchase separate proprietary software licensing for
 a fee.
 This business model is at best problematic and at worst predatory because it means that the GPL'd code
 base must be developed in a somewhat monolithic way, because volunteer
 Free Software developers may be reluctant to assign their copyrights to
 the company because it will not promise to always and forever license the
 software as Free Software. Indeed, the company will surely use such code

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