I sorta asked out of curiosity, however I am a bit worried in that if I have a
client, who has a client, that is looking to provide a service. My client may
ask me to research off the shelf solutions or open source projects that will
require little modification. If such products or projects can not be found
document what you did and preparer a conceptual model from which my client may
contract programmers to complete the task for their client. As much as I love
the GPL I do not want to taint closed projects with open code any more then I
would want to taint open projects with closed code. And now that I am getting
into the programming world as a researcher and modeler I find it best to ask
if there is any issues I should avoided. I certainly do not want to go
against the intentions of the original creators, even if they never finished
their creation. And while I believe that as long as I do not try to sell code
as a product in and of itself, then it is OK. But the selling of services
that use code gets a bit tricky. Particularly in these dark days of
copyright.
As much as I would love to ask a lawyer, I simple can not afford to do so.
On Tue, 26 Apr 2005
ted@gould.cx wrote:
> On Tue, 26 Apr 2005 Bryan.ONeal@asu.edu wrote:
> > Just out of curiosity, If I base a commercial project on a GPL project
> > 1) Are their any restrictions on profits generated?
> > 2) If I never sell or otherwise distribute my code do I have to release my
> > code?
> >
> > Example: If I set up a database of education institutions with licensed slides
> > of famous art, and then charged for membership so these institutions could
> > distribute their work to each other. And 30% of the code I used came from a
> > dead source forge project. Or the model (either the business model or the
> > site/code model) came from a dead open source project. Would I have to
> > release my code under the GPL? And what does release entail?
> >
> > And if I did not use GPL models, but I have been known to read GPL models can
> > some one who latter finds a similar GPL model sue me (or more importantly my
> > customers) to open said code under the assumption that I may have seen said
> > model and inadvertently integrated its concepts into my work?
>
> Frist, I am not a lawyer, you should probably seek legal council on most
> of these type of things so that someone can take your specific situation
> into account.
>
> In general, the GPL says that if you distribute a binary of the code, you
> must also distribute the source. For instance, if I was to change the
> source code, and then give you a copy of the compiled program, I must make
> the source available to you.
>
> Now, as far as delivering a service using an open source tool -- currently
> that does not constitute distributing the program. It is rumored this may
> change in GPL v3. If you modify a GPL Apache module, but never give
> anyone the binary, you aren't responsible to give them the source.
>
> Source code in general is protected by copyright, which protects a
> specific implementation of an idea. This is similr to the idea of a
> star-crossed lover. If you wrote a book where the love interests weren't
> able to get together because of societal issues, you wouldn't owe
> Shakespere money. This is a very fine line, and one I'd be careful with.
> I would definitely recommend implementing in another language if possible.
>
> In conclution, it probably isn't a good idea to try and do a "proprietary"
> fork of any open source project. If you add features, and other people
> add features, then you've got a greater whole than either of you could
> have created. In very few cases is that your competative advantage, it
> sounds like, in your case, that your real competative advantage is the
> data that you're collecting. I'd strongly recommend working on your
> project in an open fasion.
>
> --Ted
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