[H-GEN] GPL or not??

[Russell Stuart]

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If the author has given you the program under the GPL you can
re-distribute it, for money if you wish.  You have to do so under the
terms of the GPL of course, which essentially means you have to make the
source available to whoever you give/sell it to.

If the author imposes other conditions in addition to what the GPL
stipulates - such as not for commercial use, then he is lying if he says
he is giving you a GPL license on the program.  He may be giving
something "GPL like" but to say it is GPL is wrong.

Since the author owns the copyright he can release it under any license
he likes, or course.  This includes releasing it under several different
licences.  One might be the GPL, another might be less restrictive than
the GPL that allows you to modify the program and re-distribute it
without distributing the source.  Typically he would ask you to pay him
money in return for a less restrictive license.

Finally, the author is free to change how he licences the program at any
time.  For example lets say you have obtained a copy of his program
under the GPL, then the author advises you that he has changed licensing
of the program so that now you can not make copies without giving him
money.  He is perfectly within his rights to do that, at least under
Australian law.  You can continue using the copies you already have, or
course, as the law he is relying on is copyright law which controls how
copies are made, not how the program is used.  IANAL, but I listened to
a talk given by one at the LCA.  When he made this last point the
audience was dumb struck for a few seconds.


On Thu, 2003-02-13 at 11:22, 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 says
> 'For all commercial[2] use, upon your downloading, DansGuardian 2 is
> licensed under the 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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