OT: GPL Question

[Tony Nelson]

At 12:29 AM +0200 6/15/05, Andy Pieters wrote:
 ...
>The posibilities are legio but I want to be very carefull and fully respect
>legislation.  I am afraid I'm not that good an artist to design the icons
>myself...

No, you /should/ make your own icons.  Make them really ugly, even make
them bitmapped words, make them look like a progammer made them.  (Look at
my website for programmer-drawn icons: bold, obvious (mostly), and crude.)
If your customer wants better icons he can pay a /graphics artist/ to make
them.

You could also make a deal with the copyright holder for different
licensing arrangements for the icons.  You would have to offer something in
return (money, usually :).  If there are many copyright holders this is
hard.

Personally, I find the GPL to be pretty clear, and viral, in that any GPL'd
stuff in a product makes the product GPL'd.  That doesn't mean one can't
sell such products (Redhat does), all it means is that one must also give
away the source code and the rights to use the source code for any purpose
the GPL permits (thus, others can also sell it or give it away).
Generally, one should not have any GPL'd code in a commercial product, and
there aren't any cute disclaimers or licensing or distribution tricks that
will let one evade the GPL, and it is at best a waste of money to pay a
lawyer for such tricks.

Note that the LGPL is different, in that it is not viral; all you need to
distribute under the LGPL is the LGPL'd code you used.  The GPL authors
don't like the LGPL for that reason.  A few things are available under both
licenses.
____________________________________________________________________
TonyN.:'                       <mailto:tonynelson at georgeanelson.com>
      '                              <http://www.georgeanelson.com/>