[Bf-committers] extension clause

[Dan Eicher]

On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 1:34 PM, Alex Combas <blenderwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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?


It is *well* known that companies were using modified gpl'd software on
their servers and not releasing their changes. The GPLv3 even addressed this
'non-issue'.

Also, the majority of the gpl violations come from a company (or their
vendors) using gpl'd software 'internally' which accidently ends up in the
final public release...I'm guessing on the 'majority' part btw in case
someone wants to see statistics or something but most of the ones I've heard
of fit that pattern -- aside from the cases where someone just changes the
name of an app and sells it as their own without also providing the source
code.

Finally, it also seems that most companies are pretty tight-lipped about
what goes on 'internally' due to the fear of losing their competitive
advantage. If you had a step up on the competition from integrating FLOSS
into your internal tools would you seriously go tell the competition?