[Bf-committers] extension clause

[Alex Combas]

On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 7:27 AM, Jason van Gumster <
jason at handturkeystudios.com> wrote:

>
> Alex Combas <blenderwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Similarly, virtually zero companies actually go the route of making a
> > modified internal version of GPL software.
>
> How would someone confirm that? By virtue of the fact that it's not meant
> for
> external distribution, it's obviously something that wouldn't by widely
> publicized.
>
>
They aren't permitted legally to share their code, but there is nothing to
restrict
them to talk about what they are doing, but I haven't heard of any, have
you?



> Furthermore, I'm not sure how the 'sharing with 3rd party contractors
> constitutes distribution' argument holds any water. Are you saying that
> these
> companies - many of which are used to treating source code as trade secret
> -
> are going to have trouble keeping code private and secret simply because
> it's
> linked to GPL code? I'm sorry, but that doesn't even begin to make sense to
> me.
>
>
First of all, you're trying to look at the argument logically and
rationally. What makes you think that
companies are logical and rational when it comes to their
proprietary intellectual property?

Imagine the fear that making just one false step and you could be legally
forced to open-source
your top secret proprietary project.

There is actually a measure of rationality behind such a fear. Hey, did you
just sell your partner a license
to use your code? Guess what you just distributed it! Got any GPL code in
there? Guess what, your
whole code base could now be legally subject to the terms of the GPL.
Whoops.

Who is to say that in the future a company might not want to sell a license
to one of their partners?

This is why companies firewall their closed-source projects from their
open-source projects, and
are not likely to ever work on a closed source modifications for Blender
even if they do not have
any plans at the moment to ever distribute.