What good is VNC's GPL?

[Alasdair Ferro]

> I was thinking about that possibility too, about becoming instantly in 
> violation of the gpl the moment you decide to give away only part of 
> your work.
> Given the existence of such high profile things as ghostscript and 
> vnc, I'm assuming the gpl allows for this in some sane manner.
> I have a menuing routine that I wrote for my companies quite expensive 
> custom software, and then I gave away that routine, and I'd be shot if 
> it turned out that by doing so I gave away our whole application.
> Rather than take that chance I made it even less than bsd style and 
> just said "here, no stipulations".

It should be said that, if you wrote the routine in company time, then 
it's actually the company that own the copyright, not you, so you have 
no right to give it away, under any license. If this wasn't the case, 
then no company could create any product, as they wouldn't own the 
rights to it. Although, this may not apply in all countries...... (I'm 
in the UK)

Alasdair

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------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alasdair Ferro                       SpiraTech Ltd,
Product Conformance Engineer         Carrington Business Park,
mailto:alasdair "at" spiratech.com        Manchester,
Work:   +44 (0)161 776 4582          M31 4ZU,  U.K.
                                     http://www.spiratech.com
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