GPL & commercial software, the critical distinction (fwd)

Adam Shostack adam at homeport.org
Mon Sep 28 16:23:16 PDT 1998



On Mon, Sep 28, 1998 at 07:09:51PM -0500, Jim Choate wrote:
| 
| The problem with your interpretation is that in a sense you want your cake and
| eat it too. In short you want to be able to use somebody elses code in your
| product without their having a say in how their code is used or receiving a
| cut of the profits. The GPL/LGPL is specificaly designed to prevent this.


	I'll suggest that in a security context, having ones cake and
eating it too may not be such a bad thing.  If I can develop a
commercial product with crypto code thats been made available to the
community, then there is a lower chance the code will contain bogosity 
in its security critical functions.

	The GPL (not the LGPL) specifically prevents this with the
best of intentions.

Adam

-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
					               -Hume







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