Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: More GPL examples

Author:Eric Kidd
Posted:9/10/2000; 3:57:00 PM
Topic:Guido and Richard
Msg #:21138 (In response to 21124)
Prev/Next:21137 / 21139

No, I meant specifically to ask whether folks can cite that people have ever made public domain software proprietary.

Do you mean "public domain" in the strict legal sense, or "public domain" in the practical sense?

To the best of my knowledge, TeX is public domain software in strict legal sense. People have definitely created proprietary versions of TeX, and with permission from Knuth. [Update: I appear to be wrong. Please see Fredrik's post for details.]

Most so-called "public domain" software carries a copyright and a very generous license. Technically, this software is not in the public domain at all, because it carries a copyright.

There are some really subtle legal issues here (some of which are apparently related to disclaimers of liability). But I'm not a lawyer, so I won't go into the details.

I'm really pretty upset that my question was used to argue for the rationale of the GPL. I'm trying not to let it get my blood up.

My humble apologies. No offense was intended, certainly.

For the record, I'm not trying to convince anyone to use the GPL. I'm trying to explain why it exists, and why some honest developers choose to use it.

Mind you, I'm a little wary of the GPL myself. In my eyes, it serves a useful purpose, but it tends to create outages. So I occasionally spend time convincing people not to use the GPL, for one reason or another.

Cheers,
Eric

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