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Question about protection of OSS
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| Hi everybody,
I'm involved in some smaller open-source projects. Recently, the question
came up during a meeting about how OSS can be protected.
To clarify this, I'll give an example: suppose we write an application, and
release it as open-source. It might be based upon another application, or
it may use other open-source projects as it's base.
Now say company X stumbles upon this piece of software, downloads the
source and creates their own application from it.
As far as I can understand, according to open source licences it is allowed
to distribute a new application (and even charge for it), as long as you
include the original source and/or credit the authors. What if company X
decides to pretend that they wrote the source?
Even if you know they copied the code, you would not be able to prove it,
because you don't have their source code. And even if you did, they could
have rewritten the entire code as to no longer resemble the original code.
Not that this is likely to happen with any of the OSS tools I'm involved
in, but it's still a question I/we don't have an answer for.
Could someone please clarify this?
Thanks!
Ikke
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| Koster, H 2007-01-06, 7:29 pm |
| Op Tue, 02 Jan 2007 23:33:23 +0000, schreef Ikke:
> I'm involved in some smaller open-source projects. Recently, the question
> came up during a meeting about how OSS can be protected.
snip
> Could someone please clarify this?
it's a complicated matter, i would suggest to start reading at some of the
mainports of opensource: http://www.gnu.org it's about the GNU GPL which
is a general public licence. That's how it is protected.....
In case your dutch is o.k., klik the links in my sig for some basic
information & a dozen of other links!
--
groet,
Henk Koster jr.
http://www.interinfra.nl/opensource.htm
http://www.xs4all.nl/~qqoopp/links.htm
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| Hans Mull 2007-01-06, 7:29 pm |
| They have to release the resulting App under GPL, too. I think it is
needed to offer sourcecode for GPL Software.
mfg, Hans
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| Koster, H 2007-01-07, 7:07 pm |
| Op Sat, 06 Jan 2007 15:10:02 -0800, schreef Hans Mull:
> They have to release the resulting App under GPL, too. I think it is
> needed to offer sourcecode for GPL Software.
Yes (if i understand you correctly) that's quite common.
o well, this is the best english link I found about foss, so far:
http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html
--
groet,
Henk Koster jr.
http://www.interinfra.nl/opensource.htm
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