Can an Open Source Project Be Acquired? 336
prostoalex writes "Can an open source project be acquired? ZDNet's Between The Lines says yes, one just did. Software startup JasperSoft acquired Sourceforge-based project JasperReports, which involved acquiring the copyrights and hiring the lead developer for the project." I guess the point he tries to make is that the new corporate overloads can essentially have a free and non-free version of the code, and more or less orphan the free version. The problem of course is that if the non-free version gets good, others will simply fork.
Not possible in the EU (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not possible in the EU (Score:4, Informative)
Urheberrecht translated. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not possible in the EU (Score:3, Insightful)
a. there's the WIPO Copyright Treaty, to which Germany is a party [wipo.int]
b. there's the Berne Convention, to which both Austria and Germany are party [wipo.int]
c. there's the European Copyright Directive, for which the deadline of 2002-12-02 has passed, and thus should be implemented in Germany. As for the last one: European Law was determined in the "Van Gend en Loos Case" to have preference over local laws. So where th
Re:Not possible in the EU (Score:5, Interesting)
In the US, you can buy the copyright to an artwork, and then vandalize it in any way you like and sell the vandalized copies (the classic example is painting a moustache on the Mona Lisa). In most of Europe, this would infringe the creator's moral rights, and moral rights cannot be sold. The exploitation rights cover the rights to make money from the work in a way that does not damage the integrity of the work.
Re:Not possible in the EU (Score:3, Informative)
Under US law, several distinct rights exist as part of copyright law:
- reproduction (the right to make copies)
- distribution (the right to sell or otherwise distribute copies)
- adapation (the right to create derivative works)
- performance and display rights
The owner can sell or license any of these rights separately. So you can sell a right to copy without selling the right to make modifications (derivative works). Just because someone can sell prints of the Mona Lisa doesn't mean they can cre
Re:LOL (Score:3, Funny)
AMD is German!
Um, no. [amd.com]
AMD is and always has been a U.S. corporation, headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA from the very first year of its existence. They do have a fab in Dresden, but that makes them German about as much as Nike's sweatshops make them Chinese.
What's the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
JasperReport announcement text (Score:5, Informative)
A new company called JasperSoft (http://www.jaspersoft.com) has formed to invest in JasperReports and offer support, services and complimentary commercial products for JasperReports. I will be joining JasperSoft as Founder and Architect for JasperReports. This will allow me to work full-time on JasperReports enhancements, and direct a new team of professional open source developers to accelerate the JasperReports roadmap.
JasperReports has become more popular than I ever imagined it would. And the community has been demanding a higher level of investment and advancement in JasperReports than I alone can deliver, even working full-time. JasperSoft will help to increase the investment in JasperReports by adding full-time professional open source developers to the project.
JasperReports will stay open source forever, and its advancement will accelerate with the additional resources now being applied to it. JasperSoft and I are committed to investing in, and building the best open source reporting products available.
JasperSoft will also offer Support and Services for JasperReports, which a number of JasperReports customers have been requesting. See http://www.jaspersoft.com/services_tech_support.p
JasperSoft is a new company, headquartered in San Francisco that was formed by a combination of open source and commercial reporting domain experts. We have some of the brightest minds in the world now working on JasperReports. JasperSoft also has a commercial product line, JasperDecisions that will offer complimentary capabilities for advanced functionality to the JasperReports community. The JasperDecisions product line consists of:
Scope Server: a java server-based operational reporting solution for interactive, self-serve reporting and analytics.
Scope Designer: a swing-based report designer for Scope Server report development.
JasperDecisions is currently deployed in over 50 leading corporations and ISV's including IBM, British Telecom, Informatica and the US Department of Defense.
Today, JasperDecisions is based on its own XML report definition, called RDL (Report Definition Language) and does not support JRXML at this time. However, future versions of Scope Server will have support for JasperReports. For more information on JasperDecisions, see http://www.jaspersoft.com/products_jsps.php
This is a significant day for JasperReports, which has graduated from an open source project developed and supported by me when I could find time, to an open source product supported by a community of developers around the world, and now backed by a company and a team of professional open source developers who are committed to building the best available open source solution. I hope you will continue to work with me to make JasperReports better than ever.
Teodor
Re:JasperReport announcement text (Score:5, Informative)
Well, then it's a good thing.
As a JasperReports user, I can say the system is fundamentally sound and well designed, but squirrely to use. The big picture stuff is great, but it needs a major dose of attention to detail (like documentation for example). It also needs a decent set of design tools. Out of a half dozen people working with this product at my work place, I'm the only one able to have consistent success with it.
There's no reason this product can't take out crystal reports -- it's basically sound and very powerful, it just lacks polish.
No Problem (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem of course is that if the non-free version gets good, others will simply fork.
That's only the problem for the company that bought it. It's no problem for any of us to take the open source version and de-orphan it. Having a deep pocket benefactor is actually a positive for open source. Look at IBM. They haven't acquired rights to anything yet, but in the future they may start buying up Open Source projects... you never know.
But acquiring an open source project can be a solid benefit for any business. This is good when companies take an open source project and fully fund it. That's part of the Open Source dream, IMHO. Money can still be made on services!
Who cares if it's forked into a closed area? There still is the old source to build on!
Re:No Problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:No Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Open source has two benefits: customers of the product have access to the source, and a wider community can read, change, and improve the source. Announcements like the Jasper ones force the community to decide where they stand.
Put another way: if the lead devs decide to move, and get paid for their work, then we find out whether the project was robust or fragile. If the community does not step up to the plate, then they did not care enough.
To me, that is just fine. It makes it clear where we put our time and treasure. Projects that fail for this reason were fragile, depending on the good will of one person.
Scott
Re:No Problem (Score:3, Insightful)
The whole point of it being open source is you don't need the original developer. If someone else cares about it enough, they'll become the new lead developer on the open version. The alternative becomes a pretty silly question: If no one cares, who cares?
If someone develops something cool, and makes it open source, I say good for them. If someone else thinks it's cool enough to buy the copyright and hire them, I'm not going to criticise them for taking the money.
Normally I hate the open source argumen
Re:No Problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly the same can happen with closed source, except then you don't even have the option of paying someone to keep working o
Re:No Problem (Score:4, Insightful)
I think this breaks down somewhat when you consider the importance of the developers. In this particular case, the purchasing company not only got the code, but the lead guy who created and/or managed the code.
The FOSS community would not have a huge problem on it's hands if some company acquired and closed a branch of the Linux kernel, but there would be much wringing of hands if Linus went to the closed branch and stopped managing the free one.
TW
Re:No Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
The American Dream(tm) has been a bit perverted of late. It has come to mean getting a Good Job and acquiring lots on money and stuff so that you may hire people to wipe your ass for you.
This isn't The American Dream. The American Dream was becoming independant, unbeholden to anybody, on one's own property no matter how poor one was, because land and independence is the greatest wealth. The mortgage burning party used to be a big deal. It meant you had bought your freedom. Now everyone will take you for a financial idiot if you aren't indebted to the maximum your creditors will allow, simply because you can't acquire the most money and stuff otherwise.
Free software is The American Dream applied to "intellectual property." Its dream is to insure that the code remains independent, no matter how poor.
But you may be right in that the dream of Open Source(tm) is more akin to The American Dream(tm) and that this is the primary division between rms and esr.
The GPL is still squarely aimed at independence, however.
KFG
This isn't the first project to have this happen.. (Score:4, Insightful)
But as the article plainly says -- and where the real beauty in open-source lies -- if the free version is good ENOUGH, someone else will come along, pick up the pieces, and continue making a better product out of it.
Re:This isn't the first project to have this happe (Score:2)
I'm sorry, what? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's a pretty big claim.
As for open source projects getting bought up, I think that's great for everyone. The open source stuff still remains open and the programmers who worked on the project get some real (read monetary) appreciation for their work.
Re:I'm sorry, what? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I'm sorry, what? (Score:2)
Re:I'm sorry, what? (Score:2)
Re:I'm sorry, what? (Score:2)
Re:I'm sorry, what? (Score:5, Interesting)
http://dvarchive.sf.net/ [sf.net] or http://www.sf.net/projects/dvarchive/ [sf.net]
It was GPL licensed, but the original author changed the license terms and managed to get sourceforge to delete everything that had once been available from the SF page. For a year or more he had claimed that he had lost the sources and was going to upload when the new version worked. Obviously that didn't happen.
I think this happened because the project's primary user base was not open source fans, so very few copies of the source were ever archived elsewhere. Apparently, open source developers were never interested enough to create a fork or even keep a copy of the source while the source was available.
Now the source simply is not available for the current version (3.x), nor even the last versions which were ostensibly GPL'd (2.1 or 3.0). (The license for the current version is not GPL.)
It has happened with other projects, and will undoubtedly continue to happen. It won't happen any time soon with Linux kernels or emacs, but when something isn't incredibly popular, it can and does happen.
My lesson leared from this, is to keep a copy of the source for anything and everything in which I am even a little bit interested. Still get burned sometimes though.
sdb
Re:I'm sorry, what? (Score:5, Informative)
I was thrilled when I found TORa, and when I found the project had a windows port. It's DDL/Data extraction is by far the best feature for my day-to-day work.
At some point, Quest Software hires the TOra developer, and closes the source on the Windows port. I was still so enamoured with TOra that I pestered the Quest sales staff monthly to find out when it will hit the price sheet, so I can buy the now closed version. I don't think they ever intended to sell a competing product, though.
So, 9-12 months later, the Windows port is defunct [globecom.net], with Quest claiming that all features of TOra are now available in Toad.
I wouldn't call this a successful acquisition, unless you count Quest Software (for squishing a competing product) or the original developer of TOra (which, I admit, has to make a living some how). Perhaps you could count Mac and Linux users as winners here, as they still enjoy an open-licensed version, whose developer is now on a steady payroll related to the project.
Had they kept TOra intact for Windows users, and priced it competitively with TOAD, I would have been happy to be a paying customer.
Re:Good example (Score:2)
They are when you buy a competitor. Look at Oracle's origional statements when it announced they were buying PeopleSoft. They intended to kill off the project.
I fully expect a lot of the current macromedia software to disappear as well. Definately Fireworks will completely disappear, perhaps with whatever features it has that Adobe ImageReady doesn't will be rolled in, but Fireworks is gone, guarenteed.
Re:I'm sorry, what? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I'm sorry, what? (Score:3, Informative)
Yes (Score:4, Informative)
Here's a wrinkle that many devotees of open source either don't know about or don't talk about: Open source projects can get acquired by commercial software companies.
Re:Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
Or don't care about. If you're a user of open source, you're free to continue using the open source version you received before they were acquired. If you're a developer of open source, it's your source to sell or not to sell, depending on how idealistic you are versus how hungry you are.
Re:Yes (Score:3, Insightful)
No trademark license = danger (Score:2)
Let's say Linux gets acquired (bad example because of the number of copyright holders, but I'll use it because it is familiar).
Let's say you've been making a distribution of Linux.
They can't take away the license to the code, but the GPL, etc doesn't give you a trademark license, so you are now infringing unless you rename everything in your product from Linux to something else.
And I have heard of a linux company telling people they can't
Re:No trademark license = danger (Score:2)
They can't take away the license to the code, but the GPL, etc doesn't give you a trademark license, so you are now infringing unless you rename everything in your product from Linux to something else.
I would dispute that - the product you're distributing is in fact Linux. therefore, calling it Linux is not going to dilute anybody's trademark. It'd be different if you made another unix clone and called that Linux.
And I have heard of a linux company telling people they can't use their trademark recently
You -Really- Don't Get This? (Score:5, Insightful)
Taco, please tell me you're not really having trouble wrapping your head around this one, and that you're just pretending to be staggeringly obtuse for the sake of, well, whatever reason you'd want people to think that you're staggeringly obtuse.
If I own a piece of code, I can do whatever the hell I want with it--including sell it to somebody else. It doesn't matter whether or not I've licensed it out under the GPL or other such Open Source license. Unless I surrender it to the public domain, I own that code, and I can license a GPL version, sell a closed version, offer a crippled demo, auction off a signed copy of the source code for a million dollars, and build an extra-shiny-and-nifty-for-my-eyes-only version--or whatever else I'd like to do with it.
Re:You -Really- Don't Get This? (Score:2)
Re:You -Really- Don't Get This? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:You -Really- Don't Get This? (Score:2)
Re:You -Really- Don't Get This? (Score:5, Informative)
There are some subtleties that most people don't realize, however.
For the sake of example, assume a given project has only a single author. Said author owns the copyright to the code, and distributes it to the public in an unrestricted fashion under the terms of the GPL.
If a random member of the public wanted to fork/commercialize his code, they are bound by the GPL to keep re-releasing their changes under the GPL. However if the original Author wanted to fork his own work and make a commercial effort out of it, he can do that and make his future contributions proprietary, as the GPL doesn't apply to the Author himself (he didn't license it to himself, he owns the copyright to begin with).
Therefore, it is entirely possible for an individual author to write and maintain a peice of free software for years, and then fork his own work into a proprietary commercial derivative that nobody has any future rights to the code of except him. What he cannot do, of course, is revoke any code he already published under the GPL. This leaves his user community able to pick up the work from the last GPL version the Author released and continue the effort under the terms of the GPL.
However, most significant projects have multiple Authors, and all of the Authors would have to agree on this course of action in order to do it. That's why such a thing can't really happen to a body of work like glibc, gcc, or the linux kernel: there are far too many authors with the copyrights in the code all over the place, and you could never get them to all agree to come under one commercial roof together and make a proprietary fork.
Re:You -Really- Don't Get This? (Score:5, Informative)
Scare Mongering (Score:2)
I take these finer points about the GPL to be good things.
"Acquiring" an open source project and "orphaning" free code are just inappropriate adjectives for the everyday, ordinary activities of developers coming and going from a FS/OS project.
Add to this, as you point out, the difficulty of developing a consensus among copyright owners and although the article is basically correct, this journalist is starting to sound especially desperate to be
Copyright Assignment at FSF (Score:2)
Does anyone know what this thing looks like? Surely it involves more than emailing the maintainer and saying "I assign the copyright of my contribution to the FSF?"
Re:Copyright Assignment at FSF (Score:2, Informative)
So why is this not easily accessible at www.fsf.org?
Re:Copyright Assignment at FSF (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, that's because the FSF purposefully doesn't have them available online. The reason is that the FSF has several different assignment forms depending on what kind project you are contributing to (e.g. original work or an implemenatation of something else), on what kind of contribution you're making (new original code or old code) and depending on whether your employer (if any) possibly has claims to your work.
Too many people were filing the wrong forms, and it was wasting time.
Does anyone know what this thing looks like? Surely it involves more than emailing the maintainer and saying "I assign the copyright of my contribution to the FSF?"
Yes, they want a paper form, signed and mailed. Typically it'll require you to confirm that all your contributions are your own original work and that your employer does not have claims to your work.
(This being the form for original contributions where the employer has no claim. If you have an employer who might have a claim they want a different form where the employer waives all claims.)
Re:You -Really- Don't Get This? (Score:2)
I'm very curious about this.
If I'm a developer for a comercial, proprietary software vendor then all the code I write become property of the company. That's pretty straight forward.
If I did volunteer coding on the library web site, I would assume (but don't know for a fact) that my work would become the property of the library unless other specific arrangements
Re:You -Really- Don't Get This? (Score:3, Insightful)
It looks like these guys followed the proper channels. Bought the rights and hired the author. This is the same procedure as any other SW project (like a shareware author).
Re:You -Really- Don't Get This? (Score:2)
Re:You -Really- Don't Get This? (Score:2)
There's nothing wrong with the article. It's the writeup that irks me. I'm ranting about the fact that Taco is either:
Either Taco has a dullard's grasp of one of the most
Nothing wrong with that (Score:5, Interesting)
So, the corporate buyout angle is a red herring. This is no different from any developer taking their ball and going home.
Re:Nothing wrong with that (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't get it. (Score:2)
Technically, all that makes a "project" a "project", is the fact someone's coding on it. Hire the coder, have him sign something to turn the license for the software over to the company, and poof, ownership is transfered.
So what's the whoop here?
Re:I don't get it. (Score:3, Insightful)
Can we moderate an entire story as "Flamebait"?
Re:I don't get it. (Score:3, Interesting)
Can we moderate an entire story as "Flamebait"?
No, but people with mod points can refrain from moderating any posts in the story. It may not do much, but it's something.
GPL not retractable (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, the corp can buy the original copyright (and maybe some important later contributions) but that only gives them the ability to relicence the code.
Practically speaking, they'd have to make substantial improvements/service (ala sendmail) or market to the uninformed before the product would be saleable. And any improvement likely could be added into the free tree.
Re:GPL not retractable (Score:3, Insightful)
(This assumes that the code has a single owner. Code with many significant contributors will need to have all of the contributed code rewritten before it can be relicensed.)
Re:GPL not retractable (Score:2)
Wouldn't the same apply if a company decided for fork a commercial version?
Is this what the pundits call the virality of the GPL? Personally, i feel it's the virility of the GPL that matters anyway.
Re:GPL not retractable (Score:2)
Re:GPL not retractable (Score:5, Informative)
The only thing I can't do is revoke the GPL from code I've already released.. you are still free to distribute that code as long as you follow the terms. I myself, however, have no obligations towards you.
Re:GPL not retractable (Score:2)
Now he can't take away your license but he can do whatever he wants with code that he *owns*. As others have pointed out there might be problems with code that other people have put into t
Re:GPL not retractable (Score:2)
Depends who wrote the code... (Score:5, Insightful)
If Bob writes a program, releases it under the GPL, and incorporates contributed code into the project, that's another can of worms. I would think if he wanted to "go private" with the code base at that point he would need to get the permission of everyone who contributed any code, much like Mozilla did. If he couldn't get their permission he would have to rewrite those chunks of code.
Of course, IANAL, but that's what logic would seem to dictate; though logic has little to do with most software licensing schemes...
Re:Depends who wrote the code... (Score:2)
This isn't necessary if all contributors assign copyright to one entity. That's the FSF's policy, for example.
Re:Multiple contributors (Score:3, Insightful)
Wrong. You might have given them as gifts.
But if you didn't, and you released the code under the GPL, then the other guy must have agreed to your licensing terms in order to use your code. You own the copyright to your own portions of the code unless you transfer it.
If the person who owns the copyright to the rest of the code wants to release a non-GPL'd version, he either needs to get your approva
Re:Multiple contributors (Score:2)
Now, you check your code into $SOME_GUY's CVS repository with the intent that it become part of a GPLed work. One of two things in happening: An implicit license (for your patch to be covered by the GPL), or an implicit transfer of copyright.
Thing is, copyright transfers in the US must be explicit to be valid -- so what that leaves is Door A.
This is also why folks like the FSF, Digium, etc. require copyri
Re:Multiple contributors (Score:2)
That's a misconception - a common one, admittedly, but it still is not true. If the author incorporates your GPL'ed code into his project, then that means that, if he is not releasing his code under the GPL, he's in violation of the GPL. This, in turn, means that he has to either a) comply with the terms of the GPL by making his code available under the GPL, t
if your code is GPL it can (Score:2)
The copyright remains and the author can sell his copyright to someone who can then close the source. Whatever was already released will always be GPL, but the copyright holder always ge
Re:if your code is GPL it can (Score:2)
Size of the Project / Consent (Score:2, Interesting)
I mean sure for a handful of developers on a small project it'd be pretty easy to acquire the project, assuming none of them were OS zealots. However, good luck trying to acquire something as big as, say, the Linux kernel.
No, the sky is not falling. (Score:3, Informative)
JasperReports will stay open source forever
So it's probably premature to cry wolf.
Author relicenses work! News At 11... (Score:5, Interesting)
The good thing here is that the original work is still covered under the TOCs of its original FOSS license, so the original author and others can continue making improvements and otherwise maintain the software.
Otherwise, move along. Nothing to see here.
So what? (Score:3, Informative)
The difference with open source is that you have to track down individual contributors. With any popular open source project, it's going to be very difficult to find and get all those contributors to sell you their copyrights.
Even still, versions released prior to the buyout would still be subject to the GPL (for example) and only new versions could be made non-free.
Yes, it can happen. No it isn't anything to worry about.
I'm not sure this is entirely evil (Score:3, Interesting)
Having said all that; I really hope it's not a continuing trend.
It can be tricky... (Score:3, Informative)
Unless each developer who submits code to the project also turns over the copyright to a single entity, it can only take 1 developer to dissent and prevent the aquisition from happening except under the terms of the original license.
Re:It can be tricky... (Score:2)
Look at Borland and Firebird (Score:2)
forking is not the issue, dude (Score:2)
The point is that this is probably the last Free version of this software -- and is the source of the last available code to fork, ever. If the company so decides, nobody will ever get to see source to the newer versions.
MySql (Score:2)
Go Read the guys page, you know the link (Score:2)
Hrm, there's a wrinkle here, I think (Score:2)
Isn't that correct?
Re:Hrm, there's a wrinkle here, I think (Score:3, Insightful)
Others could not do that, but the copyright owner can!
Re:Hrm, there's a wrinkle here, I think (Score:4, Interesting)
The creator (aka "lead developer") owns the copyright to the software. The GPL does not transfer ownership of the copyright. All it does is license the software for others to use. GPL or no GPL, the copyright stays firmly in the hands of the creator.
The creator, of course, does not need to license the software to himself. That would be silly. So the creator, unlike everyone else, is NOT obligated to abide by the "licensee" terms of the GPL. The creator must still uphold his end of the GPL, which is to ensure that the software AS IT WAS when it was licensed to the licensee remains licensed to the licensee as long as the licensee abides by the terms of the GPL.
However, the creator can re-license NEW versions of the software under any license he chooses.
In theory, I imagine you could create a license which could restrict the creator's rights to license future versions of the software. This would be akin to a "promise" to not license the software EVER under anything but, say, the GPL. The GPL as it stands, however, has no such clause, and I can't imagine that most creators would want to tie their hands in such a way.
No problem! The new products are "complimentary" (Score:3, Interesting)
A new company called JasperSoft (http://www.jaspersoft.com) has formed to invest in JasperReports and offer support, services and complimentary commercial products for JasperReports.
Unless, of course, he meant "complementary"...
Seriously, the above statement seems to be saying that they will be offering mostly support and add-ons, not taking the core product private. The JasperReports software is currently under the LGPL [sourceforge.net], so there is some assurance that the original will still be available in the future, if anybody cares enough to fork the project.
Not very good recommendation (Score:4, Interesting)
Another company forked, and brought us GForge, which incorporates SVN and other improvements. Too bad GForge isn't used by the SourceForge site itself.
Food for thought.
Re:Not very good recommendation (Score:2)
I'm not sure anymore about the details, though, so... by all means, correct me if I'm wrong.
Re:Not very good recommendation (Score:2)
Read, and behold.
Tora anyone (Score:2, Informative)
A GPL version is still available from
http://sourceforge.net/projects/tora/ [sourceforge.net]
But, for how long? Will development continue?
This isn't the first time (Score:4, Interesting)
Both "bought up" by corporations, but the free versions are still very much alive and kicking.
At least these JasperSoft folks have tried to answer the obvious questions and they'd continue with the free version.
How is this news? (Score:2)
How is this news to anyone? I must be missing something. Yes, an open source project can be acquired if every contributor agrees (licensing the their contributions to the company under a different license). And even then, the last free version is still around to be used and improved. I don't think this is some big "threat" to open source, given that it would only be feasible in a project where there weren't any major contributors to the project devoted to keeping it open. Sure it's possible, and it may
Has happened before, nothing new (Score:2)
One thing to be wary of -- when a corporate entity takes over an open source project, the health of the project may become linked with the health of t
A non-free version of software? On SOURCEFORGE? (Score:2)
Article missleading: project not exactly bought! (Score:3, Informative)
It says, black on white, that the company "(...)called JasperSoft (http://www.jaspersoft.com) has formed to invest in JasperReports(...)". "Has formed to invest in". Not "has bought the project". The project has spawned a company, that it.
Again, a wannabee journalist spinning some "news" on the basis that its brainwashed readers won't read the original announcement.
Could some please teach those guys how to read, and how to report unpartially?
--
Arkan
happened with Sendmail and Bind (Score:3, Interesting)
Course their pricing is off the wall.
I couldnt believe the FUD their sales skunks were telling the windows fools in my previous job.
I convinced the company to save the $Kash and we went with the standby from sendmail.org.
I did this two years ago (Score:3, Informative)
One important aspect was that all code (I was carefull about getting copyright to any patches I applied at the time) was owned by me and I was the only person with CVS write access. Otherwise it probably wouldn't have been posible.
Also, at the time I lived in Sweden (Which is part of the EU) so the talk about this not being posible in the EU is simply not true since I've done it.
What happened with the purchase was that Quest forked the code and the designs and in some parts the code was used in Quests own projects. The original project is still very much alive and active though.
Re:Old Version? (Score:2, Insightful)
But would you begin using a piece of software if you knew it was a dead end? Think about it, the authors will never produce another update for that version and if you want to continue using it you'll either have to hope someone else will come along and fork it (unlikely) or you need to buy the commercial version. Why bother using it in the first plac
Re:Corporate Overloads = Insightful Freudian Slip (Score:3, Insightful)
sounds like a typical IT department to me
Re:Looks good to me... (Score:3, Informative)
for 3 years only copy of the gpl [tortoisecvs.org]
Of
Re:Looks good to me... (Score:2)
The Author doesn't EVER have to give you the code.
The user is bound to the license, not him. So if you distribute the program, you need to provide source, but the author doesn't.
Weird, but I can release a program under the GPL, and not give code. Then you try to redistribute the program, the person you give it to asks for code, and you can't provide it. Things get sticky.
Re:Looks good to me... (Score:2)
Besides, why wouldn't the author who wants his works covered by the GPl not offer the source?
Re:Looks good to me... (Score:2)
GPL only gives one rights to do things that would otherwise be copyright infringement.
How can one infringe one's own copyright?!
Even with EULAs the author wouldn't be bound.
How can one break a contract with oneself?
The author can't sue themself!
for 5 easy payments... (Score:2)
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