Re: Article: IBM wants to "clean up the license" of Linux

Mike A. Harris (mharris@ican.net)
Sun, 20 Dec 1998 03:17:33 -0500 (EST)

On Sat, 19 Dec 1998, Albert D. Cahalan wrote:

>> Yes, I think that according to the GPL, any change that IBM makes in
>> existing code would have to be also GPL. Now if they write their own
>> separate piece, say a module, I think they can use any license they want.
>> OSS does not distribute the source for their commercial sound stuff, do
>> they?
>>
>> QUESTION: Say IBM wrote their own mmap.c replacement with no GPL code in
>> it. Can they distribute a binary kernel image made with that mmap.c
>> without distributing the source to that small program? I mean, can that
>> particular mmap.c have a non-gpl license? In other words, they distribute
>> only the source for the GPL parts of the code?
>
>That is not the problem at all.
>
>The problem: if IBM supplies 24x7 support for Linux, they will want
>to tweak the code to help their customers. No problem, and it falls
>under the GPL of course. What if IBM uses an IBM patent? It would be
>very bad (from their point of view) if that somehow gave everyone
>rights to the patent.

Then they should clearly read the GPL, decide what they can
legal do, and not do, and then abide by the legalities of the GPL
license. If that means that they can't do something that they'd
like to... tough cookies. GPL is GPL for good reason. To
prevent commercial exploitation of GPL source code

>IBM needs a way to tightly bind a patent license to the source code.
>Without that, they are afraid to contribute. IBM might even want to
>specifically tie patents to Linux. (not also gcc, HURD, emacs...)

Then we don't need/want anything from IBM. Let them die a slow
death after Microsoft's own slow death from W2K.

>It is unfortunate that the FSF doesn't hold any patents. I don't think
>that they like patents at all, but they need some so that they can trade.
>(if anything, patent issues could give GPL code an advantage over BSD code)

In moneygrabber land perhaps. This is open software land. ESR
says it best in his documents.

--
Mike A. Harris  -  Computer Consultant  -  Linux advocate


Linux software galore:  http://freshmeat.net




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