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To: CodeMonkey
And you are mistaken about the GPL code. It is individually owned. Linus Torvalds could at any time remove his contributions from the Linux source tree...

I don't think so. But I'll humor you for the moment... Show me the part in the GPL that allows Linus to remove his contributions from the kernel. And while you're at it, explain to everyone what they're supposed to do with their RedHat CD's that contains Linus' kernel source... Mail it back to Linus?

134 posted on 09/02/2003 7:29:54 PM PDT by TheEngineer
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To: TheEngineer
One positive aspect of these tech threads now being on the
General Interest forum is that we seem to have left LOSERbane the "Doungions and Dragons wedding boy" behind. ;-).
135 posted on 09/02/2003 7:37:32 PM PDT by Coral Snake (Biting commies, crooks, traitors, islamofascists and any other type of Anti American)
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To: TheEngineer
Show me the part in the GPL that allows Linus to remove his contributions from the kernel.

I am not a lawyer and so I am reliant on the analyses of others on this matter. However the fact that TrollTech can dual license under the GPL and QPL makes that point. They have contributed code as GPL code on one hand and they keep a proprietary tree of the same code under a different license. That is how they got KDE into a dominant position. The free and commercial versions of QT for Unix are the same AFAIK. You just choose which license to use. TrollTech is free at anytime to stop releasing new versions under the GPL.

And while you're at it, explain to everyone what they're supposed to do with their RedHat CD's that contains Linus' kernel source... Mail it back to Linus?

Keep using the code. You can keep using that version without the support of Torvalds, but all future versions of his code would be BSD. There's a fork of QT under the GPL that makes it run like a native non-X11 library on Win32. If TrollTech stopped releasing under the GPL they'd still be able to continue working on the Win32 version under the GPL.

Though on all of this don't get me wrong, I think the GPL is a fairly flawed license. I've been thinking about seeing if I can rewrite IDLE (the Python IDE) to use wxPython as opposed to Tkinter. If I get around to trying that I would avoid the GPL like the plague and go for the BSD license. I personally couldn't give a rat's ass whether someone else profits off of what I've written.

136 posted on 09/02/2003 8:18:03 PM PDT by CodeMonkey
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