Advertising Clauses in Licenses

[Marc Rauw]

Forrest J. Cavalier III wrote:

> The Q Public license 1.0 (QPL), for exmaple, says something different.
> QPL 4 b says you must give source code to "all recipients of a
> binary", "without any charges beyond the costs of data transfer"
> (which precludes a profit.)  I think that is unfair.  Consider that
> I can decided to sell sources only at $50 profit.  Company B takes
> my sources, distributes executables, and then goes out of business.
>  Company C, who received binaries from B, now can come to me and
> demand sources without profit.  That's not fair, and I don't see
> how it became OSI approved.

I don't think this is correct (however, IANAL). According to this clause in
the QPL, Company B is obliged to  distribute the sources to company C
without any charges beyond the cost of data transfer *if* company C demands
such sources. Since *you* have nothing to do with company C (their deal was
with company B, not you), you are not obliged to distribute the source code
to company C at all, whether or not company B goes out of business.

Regards,
Marc Rauw.

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