----- Original Message -----
From: Dale Botkin <dale@BOTKIN.ORG>

> If I'm going to modify some open source software and release the source,
> that's great.  if you're going to do it and release the source, that's
> great too.  If you're going to spend thousands of hours and dollars
> improving the software and sell it without the source, well, who am I to
> argue with that?  I think you should be able to.  If I want the same
> functionality or features or improvements, I am always free to do the same
> thing you did -- on my time, with my money.

The thing is that you are building on and selling for profit someone else's
code that they probably gave away for free.  As I understand it, you CAN
make your own changes and not distribute the source, you first need to
negotiate permission from those that contributed to your code base as GPL
and give you a different licence.  Or you can write everything yourself from
scratch, or find a similar package with a different licence.

The writer may choose what they want to licence their code as and how they
want their code distributed.  Copyrights are named that for a reason.  If
you disagree with an open source licence you can often ask to negotiate a
different one or use someone else's code, but there's no way anyone force
licence wishes on anyone, but without a licence of some sort, you have
"stolen" code or whatnot.

> > BTW the license you're looking for Dale is the BSD license. It pretty
much
> > has no restrictions on redistribution or modifications. It prefectly
fits
> > your desire of a lack of control on deriviatives.
>
> Yep, I've seen it/used it.  I like it a lot better.

There's also the Lesser GPL or Library GPL to look at.  BSD has a problem
such that say, as I understand it, Apple can and has put their copyright on
the entire codebase regardless of how much they contributed to it.

> I call mine "free for noncommercial use" but include an email address for
> those who want to license it for comercial use.  Works fine.  I figure if
> it needs a lawyer's official stamp of fees to be good enough for the
> prospective user, he'll probably swipe it anyway.  It's worked for me.

There are always going to be those people that are going to swipe regardless
of licence.  That's not really the concern here.

Jeff
http://demaagd.com/anime/dvdbugs/

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