GNU GPL can't force payment?

Cinly Ooi cooi at theiet.org
Wed Dec 15 13:28:26 UTC 2010


Dear DES et al,

"The package is available here for academic research only under the
> LESSER GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE"
>

I seen quite a lot of cases where people in academic only wants to apply GPL
or LGPL in the 'research community' only so they come out with such a 'cute'
license.  Being in an academic environment I had a few discussion where
people like GPL and LGPL terms for their  'research community' but not
others.

Needless to say they violated FSF's copyright on GPL and LGPL. Normally when
you tell them they cannot do that under the GPL and LGPL and they cannot
modify the license, they back off and use their own private license.

Sometimes, for  convenience, I know people do informally says to each other
'GPL- (or LGPL-) like terms for research use only'. It is just a short cut
to say you may redistribute your program incorporating my code but must
publish the source code (or modification of your source code) and only for
research use only.

However, this is the first time I see such license being publicly
advertised.

Nonetheless, most of the time I think people will respect their wishes. Me
personally will avoid them if I could. I don't like the violation of FSF's
copyright.

Best regards
Cinly
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