---- START NEW MESSAGE --- Received: from cherry.ease.lsoft.com [209.119.0.109] by dpmail10.doteasy.com with ESMTP (SMTPD32-8.05) id AEFD184600FA; Tue, 27 Jan 2004 23:04:29 -0800 Received: from PEAR.EASE.LSOFT.COM (209.119.0.19) by cherry.ease.lsoft.com (LSMTP for Digital Unix v1.1b) with SMTP id <23.00CC0883@cherry.ease.lsoft.com>; Wed, 28 Jan 2004 2:04:22 -0500 Received: from MITVMA.MIT.EDU by MITVMA.MIT.EDU (LISTSERV-TCP/IP release 1.8e) with spool id 2407 for PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU; Wed, 28 Jan 2004 02:04:16 -0500 Received: from MITVMA (NJE origin SMTP@MITVMA) by MITVMA.MIT.EDU (LMail V1.2d/1.8d) with BSMTP id 0652; Wed, 28 Jan 2004 02:03:38 -0500 Received: from sj-iport-2.cisco.com [171.71.176.71] by mitvma.mit.edu (IBM VM SMTP Level 430) via TCP with SMTP ; Wed, 28 Jan 2004 02:03:37 EST X-Comment: mitvma.mit.edu: Mail was sent by sj-iport-2.cisco.com Received: from sj-core-1.cisco.com (171.71.177.237) by sj-iport-2.cisco.com with ESMTP; 27 Jan 2004 23:08:25 +0000 Received: from cisco.com (cypher.cisco.com [171.69.11.143]) by sj-core-1.cisco.com (8.12.9/8.12.6) with ESMTP id i0S73cHP027360 for ; Tue, 27 Jan 2004 23:03:38 -0800 (PST) Received: from mac.com (sjc-vpn1-220.cisco.com [10.21.96.220]) by cisco.com (8.8.8/2.6/Cisco List Logging/8.8.8) with ESMTP id XAA26851 for ; Tue, 27 Jan 2004 23:03:37 -0800 (PST) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v552) Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.552) Message-ID: <19A86815-5160-11D8-9E8E-000A95E5DF26@mac.com> Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 23:03:39 -0800 Reply-To: pic microcontroller discussion list Sender: pic microcontroller discussion list From: William Chops Westfield Subject: Re: SCO lobbying Congress about Linux To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU In-Reply-To: <011a01c3e518$b0e9e440$7b01a8c0@Paradise> Precedence: list X-RCPT-TO: Status: U X-UIDL: 371856040 >> I think you're being a bit black-and-white about this That's one of the problems with GPL. It's VERY black and white. A small amount of GPL code "poisons" a large amount of other code. GOOD licenses are negotiable. (There are an awful lot of not good licenses around these days, of course. Sigh.) As an interesting question, can the AUTHOR of code that was released under GPL ever change the license terms? As in "I want to make this completely PD now", or perhaps "I made a big set of improvements and I think I can sell it now as proprietary code"? The latter seems reasonably doable, assuming that the basis of the improved code all belongs to the author (doesn't contain any fed-back improvements from others.) The former seems more problematic... BillW -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The list server can filter out subtopics (like ads or off topics) for you. See http://www.piclist.com/#topics .