Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!rochester!bukys From: bukys@cs.rochester.edu (Liudvikas Bukys) Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss Subject: (1) The $1,000,000 question, and (2) a new question: un-copylefting? Message-ID: <1989Jul27.191043.11584@cs.rochester.edu> Date: 27 Jul 89 19:10:43 GMT References: <33473@apple.Apple.COM> <247@unmvax.unm.edu> Reply-To: bukys@cs.rochester.edu.UUCP (Liudvikas Bukys) Organization: U of Rochester, CS Dept, Rochester, NY Lines: 38 Regarding media cost, the question boils down to "Can a vendor charge an arbitrary amount for a source medium charge?" The answer is probably "maybe", but perhaps it would help to rephrase it as "If a vendor really `values' their code that much, would they distribute it under a copyleft at all?" The vendor would be risking a lawsuit which might result in an unplanned cheap dissemination of the source, by court order. If FSF really wants to tighten the rules, future GPLs could insert the word "at reasonable cost" in the text. They idea is to raise the risk level of those who choose to push the limits. Unfortunately, *overly* vague wording may pose some risk to the future of the GPL in court. Another approach might be to require distribution of sources via the same medium as the binaries, or via any *cheaper* medium. This would cover the normal cases (tapes, ftp, floppy, modem), and also the case of binaries on ROM (sources on ROM or anything cheaper). It also seems general purpose enough to prevent technical obsolescence. ----- Meanwhile, here is a new question: If I write something and copyright it, and license it to others with a copyleft, it seems that I am under no obligation to continue to grant such a license to all future derived works. I could write a buggy editor, copyleft and distribute it (and everyone else's derived works must remain copylefted), but as the author and owner of the code in question, I think I can distribute future versions under any terms I like. Having hooked some number of users with my free buggy editor, I could then cash in by offering a new greatly improved non-buggy version of the editor, for a price, and without source code. (Note that only authors/owners can get away with this.) Is this right? (I don't ask in order to antagonize the FSF, but to figure out what a reasonable understanding of the GPL is, by probing it with extreme cases.)