[H-GEN] GPL or not??

Sarah Walters sarah at uow.edu.au
Wed Feb 12 21:06:18 EST 2003


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GPL is about free as in 'free speech', not 'free beer'.

GPL means if you use it in your program, your own program must be
released as GPL. You can modify as you wish. You can charge for it if
you like, but the source code must be freely available to the people you
are providing the software to. IIRC, they have the right to modify and
re-release as they wish, as long as they include the licence.

On Thu, Feb 13, 2003 at 11:22:42AM +1000, Tony Melia (DMS) wrote:
> Hi, I am a bit confused about a software program that is supposedly GPL, but
> is not downloadable (commercially) without a license.  The software is
> Dansguardian, which is GPL for both commercial and non-commercial, however,
> the author says you need to buy a license to download it.  Can you do this
> under GPL?  I understood GPL means you can download it, resupply it  (all in
> source form) e.t.c as long as it is not modified, or YOU do not charge for
> it.  I would like to setup Dansguardian for some clients, but don't want to
> breach licenses by just installing it.
>  
> The download page at http://dansguardian.org/?page=copyright2
> <http://dansguardian.org/?page=copyright2>  says 'For all commercial[2] use,
> upon your downloading, DansGuardian 2 is licensed under the
> <http://www.fsf.org/licenses/gpl.html> GPL, however permission to download
> DansGuardian from this, or any mirror[3], website is restricted. '
>  
> Can anybody who know's a lot about GPL clarify if this is really GPL
> software or not?
>  
> Tony Melia MCSE, MCP, MCP+I
>  
> 
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-- 
Mrs Sarah Walters
Systems Group
Information Technology Services
University of Wollongong
Phone: +61 2 4221 3775


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