Does anyone have an opinion on how this might apply to plug-in
dissectors. I'm writing a dissector for a patented protocol. The
intent is to keep it inside the company, but there's always a chance
someone will get hold of it. I was assuming that as a separate piece
of software, making use of Ethereal facilities, I was reasonably
safe. After all, I don't think Apples Quick Time plug-in for Mozilla
puts Quick Time source under GPL.
Harry
At 12:58 PM -0400 9/7/03, Ashok Narayanan wrote:
I'm sure you will get lots of IANAL replies, so let me throw mine in
as well. Note: I actually spoke with a lawyer about this exact same
issue (though not regarding Ethereal). But not everything here is from
the lawyer; seek your own legal advice.
The short answer is, if you are using it internal to your company then
you are not required to redistribute source to your modifications to
the general public. But, if you redistribute the modified binary to
*anyone* outside your company, you must then license this binary under
the GPL (and only the GPL), which means that you must then make
available the modified source to the third party, and you may not
restrict him from sharing it with *everyone* outside your company. The
GPL only requires you to make source available for software that you
are *redistributing* to external entities.
Two useful pointers are here:
http://www.fsf.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLRequireSourcePostedPublic
which says "an organization can make a modified version and use it
internally without ever releasing it outside the organization."
and here (discussion of the old Apple APSL license 1.x):
http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/historical-apsl.html
which describes an incompatibility as this: " The APSL does not
allow you to make a modified version and use it for your own private
purposes, without publishing your changes. " This implies that the
GPL does *not* make this requirement.
Now, the GPL doesn't make a statement about the fact that "you" can be
an organization, but this is how it was explained to me.
- If your modifications are copyright to the company (e.g. in my case
"(C) Ashok Narayanan, Cisco Systems", then your company holds part
copyright to the changes (or full copyright, depending on your
employee agreement). Licenses such as the GPL are only used to
transfer rights to people who do *not* hold the copyright. Therefore,
anybody in your company does not require any license to use the
modifications in question, and neither do you require a license to
redistribute this to anybody in your company. However, you then cannot
claim any personal ownership of this code once you leave the
company. The GPL makes this sort of claim irrelevant, of course.
- If your modifications are copyright to you personally (e.g. "(C)
Ashok Narayanan", and you wish to maintain this copyright for yourself
(and not share it with the company) then you will need to license your
modifications to your company using the GPL. You must then make the
source available to your company and you cannot forbid your company
from redistributing it to anybody (via license). You can however,
forbid people in your company from redistributing this outside the
company via an internal corporate directive. Also, if you leave the
company you could claim personal ownership of the code. The GPL makes
this sort of claim irrelevant, of course.
-Ashok
On Sat, Sep 06, 2003 at 12:57:33PM -0400, Dave Shawley wrote:
I got a question about about distributing Ethereal as an internal tool
for our field support guys. We have a number of proprietary protocols
that I have written dissectors for. I have been using it for my own
debugging purposes since I am responsible for writing the protocol
servers. Anyway, if we wanted to distribute Ethereal internally what
are the distribution requirements since it is GPLed?
I guess that my real question is: do we have to distribute the source
> for our dissectors or is it legal to release binary form dissectors if
we provide links to the source for Ethereal?
Now for the real story... my manager really wants to distribute Ethereal
since it is a *very* useful debugging tool. She thinks that since it is
an internal distribution, we shouldn't have to divulge the source for
our dissectors. I'm pretty sure we have to distribute the source but I
figured that I would ask anyway.
Now if we do have to distribute the source, is it legal to to dist the
source on the same disk? I think that our lawyers will go for this one
since the disks are only available to our internal FEs. Anyway, I need
some response on this from the legalease on this list.
Thanks,
Dave Shawley
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--- Asok the Intern ----------------------------------------
Ashok Narayanan
IOS Network Protocols, Cisco Systems
1414 Mass Ave, Boxborough MA 01719
Ph: 978-936-1608. Fax: 978-936-2218 (Attn: Ashok Narayanan)
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