On Friday 14 May 2004, rcunniff at stp.dias.ie (Ronan Cunniffe) wrote:
>I still think this is incorrect.
>>Suppose company X incorporates some big chunk of GPL code into their
>product, and when confronted, they say (big press splash) that they'll
>GPL the whole thing, source code available on demand.... for a fee of
>10^12 euro.
>>You take them to court over this fee, and force them to itemise this
>rather extraordinary price.
>>In other words, there is a mechanism (albeit complicated and unpleasant)
>for preventing a copyright holder charging anything they desire.
I believe Paul is correct there. Company X can take some arbitrary piece of
GPL code, change it (slightly, a lot, or not at all) and then advertise it for
sale for whatever price they like. However, they must of course comply with
the GPL, which means that they can't impose conditions on redistribution and
they must make source available, either delivered with the object or for "a
charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution"
(which means that "physically performing source distribution" is obviously an
expensive sport in Hong Kong)
Niall
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