[ILUG] Best WIFI card for linux - Success...!

[Niall O Broin]

On 27 Jan 2008, at 22:48, Rick Moen wrote:

> Quoting Niall O Broin (niall at linux.ie):
>
>> However, he also says under  "DansGuardian 2 - re-licensing"
>>
>> As the copyright holder, I am entitled to release DansGuardian 2
>> under any licence that I choose. I have chosen to release
>> DansGuardian 2 to most people under the GPL version 2.
>>
>> All fine and dandy, but once he licenses it to anybody under the GPL
>> v2, those people can then give a copy of it to whomever they choose
>> under the terms of the license, so it's a touch odd.
>
> It's not _very_ odd:  A copyright holder attaches licences to
> _instances_ of a codebase he/she issues and distributes.

Indeed - MySQL for instance does just that.

> Daniel Barron could issue one instance under GPLv2, one under a
> proprietary licence of his choosing bundled with support and upgrade
> service entitlements, etc.  He could cease to issue new versions under
> GPLv2 at any time, if that suits his desires.  (Other people could  
> then
> fork the head code, if they wished.)

But the point is that Danile doesn't use choose (at this time) to  
license his code
under any other license - he just chooses to not distribute his code  
under the GPL
to commercial entities unless they pay him a fee (and contrary to  
what I earlier
said, it's not a support fee, as he will not provide commercial  
support - it's a
download fee.

The bottom line is that he's trying to make some money from those who  
make money from his software, which is fine and dandy, and he's  
hoping that most commercial entities will choose
to pay him for the right to download updates rather than bother  
obtaining them perfectly
legally under the GPL elsewhere.


Niall