I have no intention to teach anything to anyone :-) , but here is my comment to the subject.

AFAIK:

- if you use GPL source code *STATICALLY LINKED* to your own code, you must release your source code as GPL.

- if you use GPL source code *DINAMICALLY LINKED* to your code, yours is not GPL, unless you want it to.

I resell an equipment from a german company that embedded Linux in a PowerPC microprocessor, and they sell their hardware controlling libraries and also many other useful stuff in the form of more libraries that rely on the Linux kernel, and several other GPL'ed libraries. No problem. No mess. I have to pay them license fees for every package sold.

And, like this one, I know that several others are embedding Linux. Corel did ported their office suit once, and they didn't GPL'ed it. IBM is using Linux on many kinds of servers, and they do not opened their products running on such machines. Novel is now starting to use Linux, and the same thing happens.

So, you can *INDIRECTLY* profit from GPL source code, just don't statically link it with your own.

And you can *DIRECTLY* profit from GPL code: give your program with the source code (that someone else on the world may be adding features and removing bugs) to your clients and sell services (expertise) to them.


For Wouter, try http://creativecommons.org . Not sure if it will fit, but a good reading, at least ;-)


Hope this helps
Francisco

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