Re: [Xen-users] RE: Does it legal to analysize XEN source code and write a book about it

[Nico Kadel-Garcia <nkadel@xxxxxxxxx>]

Tao Shen wrote:
> 7.  Some of the examples in the open source industry right now 
> include:  using PostgreSQL based code which is GPL'd, add a non-GPL'd 
> replication suite to it, and call it enterpriseDB.  Using PostgreSQL 
> based code, tweak some variables, add some non-GPL'd code (interfaced 
> to the GPL'd one) to do distributed join and call it "bizgres" and 
> "greenplum".   MySQL's Enterprise vs Community editions....the 
> examples are all other the place.  All of them push the GPL boundary 
> but don't violate it.    And what I call the "wrapper GPL" type 
> products, and "dual licensing".  No, it's all perfect legal.   From an 
> ethics perspective...it's arguable.
> Feel free to discuss this as you see fit.
Entire OS's are built this way, such as RHEL with its additional 
Clustering tools and its RedHat Network management tools. Zmanda does it 
with the Amanda sotware as well, and there are numerous commercial 
Nagios and MRTG management toolsets that are not themselves freeware or 
open source. Tivo does their own special trick of locking down the 
software so it can't be patched or modified, even though they publish 
source to GPL tools they change, and that led partly to the changes in 
GPLv3.
So it's an accepted practice, as long as you don't go over the carefully 
drawn copyright lines and pull the Netgear trick of "we'll use glibc, 
modify it, and just not tell anyone."
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