Commercial Liscense for rsync

[Shachar Shemesh]

fred wu wrote:

>Dear All,
>
>  I am very new in open source. Please give me some ideas on the
>following questions.
>
>  What is the liscense of rsync for commerical use? Do I need to pay
>for commercial use? Is it still GPL?
> 
>  A similar case is MySQL. It has commercial liscense for business use.
>
>  Any help will be appreciate!
>  Thanks!
>
>Regards,
>Fred
>  
>
Hi Fred,

My answer is neither official (I am not a copyright holder for rsync) 
nor authorative (I am not a lawyer). I did study these things, however.

The question of whether you can or cannot use a GPL product for 
commercial use depends on what the use is. If all you want is to USE the 
product, go right ahead. It matters not whether for money or not. Use 
rsync (or Mysql, or Linux, or anything else under the GPL).

If what you want to do is to resell one of those technologies, it 
depends on what you want to happen to it in the interim. In the case of 
a pure standalone program, such as rsync, if you didn't change the 
program itself, you are fairly free to sell it as part of your product. 
If, however, you want to make changes to it, you must read and abide by 
the terms of the GPL in order to do that. In essence, you can do 
whatever you like, so long as you:
1. Don't change the license. I.e. - it must still be GPL (along with all 
of your changes).
2. Distribute the complete sources, in a form that allows your clients 
to recreate the program.
3. Make sure your clients know, either through the documentation or 
through something the program itself prints, that they have these rights.

I hope this answers your question.

Also, don't even think about relying on this small email to base your 
business on this answer. If in doubt, get a lawyer.

          Shachar

-- 
Shachar Shemesh
Lingnu Open Source Consulting ltd.
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