IMPORTANT: please read

[Bernd Gehrmann]

On Sat, 02 Oct 1999 Martin Piskernig wrote:
>> development, but if this is going to be commercialized (and sure will
>> be), we have to insist that they don't start with our codebase if it's
>> not GPL.
>
>When I understand the GPL right, they _must not_ use our codebase if they want
>to do something _commercial_ with kdevelop code. New code, derived from the
>kdevelop classes, will always be under the GPL, too. It's like a virus
>infecting a program and distributing with it :-)

Depends on what you mean by "commercial". Cygnus is selling a commercial
version of gcc, Altrasoft (I think their new name is BeOpen) is selling
a commercial version of XEmacs. Of course they are still distributed
under the GPL, but the GPL doesn't force them to make their source code
publicly available, just to their customers. Of course, they can not
prevent their customers from putting that software on a public ftp server.
In any case, the company we are coping with (given what a secret they make
out of their work, I suspect they must have something to do with the CIA ;-)
is probably not planning to make plugins that are of general interest.
Of course, I could be totally wrong :-)  (Wow, ain't I good in making
zero content statements <g>)

Bernd.