Nagios and the GPL (was Has anyone looked into the...)

[Paul L. Allen]

Robert Nelson writes: 

> I think the question is whether you have to make the source available to
> everyone, or just those to whom you distribute the binaries. i.e. Do you
> have to acquire the binaries to get the source, or do can you get the
> source without getting the binaries? 
> 
> I personally think it could be interpreted either way, depending on how
> much you pay your lawyer.

Unless you read the licence and FAQ fully and understand the
implications... 

Section 2b, applying to the original program or a modified version thereof: 

   Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to
   give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically
   performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the
   corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of
   Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software
   interchange; 

The FAQ defines "third party."  It is ANYONE, whether they bought the
code from you or not.  The FAQ explains why this is so.  You may have sold
the program (actually, requested a copying fee/installation fee/support
fee) to a second party who is fully entitled to sell/give that code
to a third party.  If the second party did not receive the source code
along with the program then the second party MUST include information
telling the third party they can request the source code from you. 

Theoretically, you might be able to argue in a court that you are not
required to give the source to a third party who doesn't have a copy of
the program.  But to even learn that the modified program exists and that
you are required to supply the source, the information must have come
from a second party who is perfectly entitled to give the third party a
copy of the program if you try to insist upon proof that the third party
has the  program.  So only a foolish company would even start to go down
that road because it's administrative overhead.  Once it is learned that
it is GPL code, the people you have sold it to can be persuaded to give
copies away.  Even if you charge an outrageous "copying fee" for the
source, enough third parties can club together so that one of them can
request it and then just give it away. 

The one hole that is open is that there is no requirement that you
inform the wider community that you have a modified version of a GPL
program and they can request the source from you.  But if you've
complied with the GPL then second parties will know that they are
allowed to give it away and some of them will.  Directly or indirectly,
a copy will eventually reach somebody who says "I want the source so I
can give this stuff away for free." 

If you haven't complied with the GPL and try to pass it off as purely
commercial, closed-source code, once you've sold your program you
run the risk of customers spotting that it is derived from GPL code (as
happened with a commercial system derived from Nagios recently).  And that
is when all your plans of selling GPL code as commercial, closed-source
code go down the tubes.  Then you have to release the source (if your
modifications are good enough that anyone wants them) and the copyright
holder can sue you in court to prevent you selling any more copies of
it because you broke the licence and forfeited all the rights it grants
you.  You can do it, but sooner or later you'll get caught out and lose
financially. 

RMS is one of the major-league programmers.  But perhaps his finest work
is the GPL.  So far the GPL has resisted all attacks and yet the logic
used to constrict it means that it is surprisingly small and the subtleties
of the way it resists attack are not always immediately understood. 

-- 
Paul Allen
Softflare Support 




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