[ILUG] [OT] GPL and non-disclosure agreements

[lbedford at wbtsystems.com]

On Wed, May 17, 2000 at 03:09:56PM +0100, John P. Looney wrote:
> On Wed, May 17, 2000 at 03:01:47PM +0100, Fergal Daly mentioned:
> > At 14:49 17/05/00, John P. Looney wrote:
> > >  If you recieve anything that's derived from LGPL code, you have the legal
> > >right to demand the person that has given you the modified code to give
> > >you a copy of the original LGPL'd work; that's all.
> > >
> > >  If it's strong-GPL'd, then they have to provide you with the complete
> > >source code.
> > 
> > What if you come in one morning and there's a shotcut on your desktop to 
> > the program but it's on a shared drive or it's executable but not readable 
> > or both? And if I'm an IT manager do I have to make sure there's a shortcut 
> > to the GPL or info about where they can get the source on everyone's 
> > desktop too?
> 
>  Yes. If you give them the executable, they should be provided with
> source, and the license, if they ask for it.
Hmm, I'm not convinced on this matter... GPL doesn't guarantee that you
have to give someone the program. So, giving it to people in the company
for internal use should be okay. The company can then restrict who you
can give the software to... so I couldn't give it to someone outside
the company. 

Maybe this is something *RMS* and Bruce Perens are working on for GPL v3..
I know there are some major problem with object technologies and the GPL
(it's insiduous, so CORBA objects under GPL could force other software into
being GPL as well..)

L.
-- 
Liam Bedford                  | What we've got here is, failure to
System Administrator          | communicate. Some man you just can't
WBT Systems, Block 2,         | reach... so you get what we had
Harcourt Centre, Harcourt St. | here last week, which is the way
01-4170100                    | he wants it.