{"id":173,"date":"2005-04-25T21:08:46","date_gmt":"2005-04-25T21:08:46","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2005-04-25T21:08:46","modified_gmt":"2005-04-25T21:08:46","slug":"","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/?p=173","title":{"rendered":"The GNU Public License: Accept Yes\/No?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A large amount of free and open-source software is distributed under the GNU General Public License<\/a> (GPL). All of my software<\/a> is.<\/p>\n

The GPL is not an “end-user” license in the same way that licenses for commercial software are. This is because the GPL license actually affects modifying and distributing<\/i> of the software, not use. GPL-licensed software can be used for any purpose without restriction. Its purpose is that any new software which is derived from (or simply just a modified version of) existing GPL software can only be distributed under the GPL.<\/p>\n

However, authors of some GPL applications are so used to having to “accept this license” fed to them at installation time by commercial applications, that they have introduced a check box in their installers requiring the user to “accept the GPL” in order to use their GPL software. This is Bad and Wrong.<\/p>\n

Two examples I noticed recently were Website Baker<\/a> and Mambo<\/a>, both web page content management systems. I was testing them out and hit “Check this box to accept the GPL”, without which the software could not be installed. So, in the great tradition of open source software, I decided to submit this problem as a bug report to both sets of developers. This gained one favourable response<\/a> and one ongoing and mixed response<\/a>. In fact, the developer for Website Baker had read my bug report, responded to it, fixed the code, uploaded it into the version-tracking system and closed the bug within a few hours: excellent, I’m glad I reported it.<\/p>\n

Actually, in both of the above cases, it would be perfectly legal for anyone (me, you, whoever) to download the software and modify<\/i> it (without installing it), and change the installer so that it does not require the user to accept the GPL during installation!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A large amount of free and open-source software is distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). All of my software is. The GPL is not an “end-user” license in the same way that licenses for commercial software are. This is because the GPL license actually affects modifying and distributing of the software, not use…. (read more<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}