OpenSource may not disallow it

David Woolley forums at david-woolley.me.uk
Sun Mar 15 14:22:24 UTC 2009


HDE Weird wrote:

> OpenSource license. So, an OpenSource license may not disallow users
> breking the OpenSource license, like including parts of OpenSource
> code in commercial closed-source programs, if they do it using
> open-source programs. Right?

Obviously wrong, and not really worth the effort of arguing about. 
Their limit in this context is that they cannot restrict the use of the 
open source software as a tool in the generation of the proprietary 
software, but not forming part of that software.

Even if the OSD "field of endeavour clause" were flawed in this respect, 
it would, at worst affect the OSD approval of the licence, not the 
actual validity of the licence, and, in practice, the OSD would be fixed 
so that the GPL remained approved.

(Some Open Source Definition compliant licences do permit integration 
into closed source products, though.)

-- 
David Woolley
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