FC4 or FC5
Sean
seanlkml at sympatico.ca
Sat Jun 17 19:54:41 UTC 2006
On Sat, 17 Jun 2006 14:44:12 -0500
Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Microsoft can make any arrangement they want to license existing
> third party components and include them with their own works
> and can thus provide any functionality they think a
> consumer wants. A potential competitor can take BSD licensed
> code and do the same, making it easier for a company without
> Microsoft's resources to develop a good competitive product.
> However, many of the needed components can never be released
> under GPL terms because they are already patented by others
> or the best implementation is under someone else's copyright.
Now stop right there. Anybody, can go buy a patent from any
existing third party and release it under the GPL. Why must you
spread such stupitity?
> The terms required to license these components may be perfectly
> acceptable to the end user but if they don't specifically match
> the GPL, the 'work as a whole' clause prevents any GPL'd code
> from being used. So paradoxically, the end user can separately
Wrong. Anyone can buy a patent from a third party and release
the resulting software under the GPL.
> obtain all the parts, but is prevented by the GPL from having
> a working combination distributed to him. So, all the work that
> has gone into GPL'd code is wasted in terms of helping build
> competitive products that need additional components under other
> terms.
The GPL doesn't prevent this. You're just plain wrong. For instance
the RCU code is patented by a third party but has been released
under the GPL. Please dream up a new argument.
Sean
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