Samba and GPL

[andreas moroder]

Hello,

I did follow the discussion about the GPL, samba and SSL and I have  my
opinion to post.

1. Andrew Tridgell owns the copyright

2. This gives Andrew ALL the rights on samba. He has even the right to sell it
or use it under another license. In my opinion GPL does only force the rest
of the world to redistribute samba with sources. Andrew can give it away
without the source. What he can't is to stop the redistribution of the
sources that are under GPL.

"Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your
rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the
right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on
the Program"   ( GPL )

May be the license say "entirely by you" , but as long all the source has the 
same copyright owner, this can meen "entirely by you" .


3. If GPL permits you to study the samba sourcecode and rewrite the
functionality ( without copying the sources ) you can set this application
under GPL, but you can also give away a runtime only, as long as YOU have the
copyright.

4. What I miss on the samba mailing lists and websites is a statement that
tells that every patch or modification becomes copyright of Andrew ( or the 
entire samba team ). What happens if a programmer that did post big patches 
reclaims his copyright on his pathes in the future ?
www.phpgroupware.org ask that you give them the copyright if you send in 
patches or by changes to the source. Naturally this gives them the right of 2.

5. The statement "either version 2 of the License, or   (at your option) any
later version" SHOULD be changed. What if the FSF changes radically the GPL ?
Look at the comment of Ulrich Drepper ( the maintainer of glibc ) in the
latest glibc version.


Bye

Andreas

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