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How about we use a different analogy. Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft - they all have patches to the linux kernel which they do not always open source. An

How about we use a different analogy. Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft - they all have patches to the linux kernel which they do not always open source. And nothing in the GPL compels them to open source them so long as they aren't distributed outside the company, and are only used on internal systems. Let's say an employee with access to those internal kernels, who is under an employment contract and non-disclosure agreement, releases the kernel source code with those patches included. Would the GPL prevent that employee from being fired and/or sued for violation of NDA? Nope. >GPL says that you can't impose further restrictions on the people you distribute GPL software to. That's just the thing. Red Hat does not impose any further restrictions on the software that has been distributed to you. You can continue using RHEL, in theory, even with an expired license. There is no "kill switch". But Red Hat is not obligated to continue providing you with access to their services, including their software update repositories.

phpisthebest 3y ago
>>Would the GPL prevent that employee from being fired and/or sued for violation of NDA? That is not even close to being an analogy. In that case the Code, copyright, was not transferred to the employee, They are not operating under the conditions of the GPL at all. As an employee I am not given a "license" to the code as I would be as a customer or licensee of the code. As such violation of the NDA would have nothing to do with the GPL at all.
- dralley 3y ago
  > In that case the Code, copyright, was not transferred to the employee, They are not operating under the conditions of the GPL at all. In this scenario let's say that the patches are GPLv2 licensed and apply to a larger GPLv2 codebase, as opposed to something like a separate kernel module. So the code is, indeed, GPL, and both the built kernels and the source itself are unambiguously a derivative work of GPL code. And this code is distributed to you as part of your job. It wasn't stolen, it was provided to you with specific terms of use, namely that it only be used within the company. Is your argument that there can be no legal constraints beyond what "the GPL says" in this situation? That those constraints shouldn't apply, because they infringe your GPL-provided rights?
AshamedCaptain 3y ago
As the GPL FAQ says, distribution between employees of the same company may not even be considered "distribution" depending on the region. The analogy is stretching this too far.
- dralley 3y ago
  Fine - so make them third party contractors instead of employees of the same company. The end result is the same.
  - AshamedCaptain 3y ago
    No, it's not. Even if they were employees of a different company that is a subcontractor, the jurisprudence is not clear at all. This is basically the "museum argument" which is quite old. It's an entire different story if you do distribute the software to your subcontractors for their use.

phpisthebest 3y ago

>>Would the GPL prevent that employee from being fired and/or sued for violation of NDA? That is not even close to being an analogy. In that case the Code, copyright, was not transferred to the employee, They are not operating under the conditions of the GPL at all. As an employee I am not given a "license" to the code as I would be as a customer or licensee of the code. As such violation of the NDA would have nothing to do with the GPL at all.

dralley 3y ago
> In that case the Code, copyright, was not transferred to the employee, They are not operating under the conditions of the GPL at all. In this scenario let's say that the patches are GPLv2 licensed and apply to a larger GPLv2 codebase, as opposed to something like a separate kernel module. So the code is, indeed, GPL, and both the built kernels and the source itself are unambiguously a derivative work of GPL code. And this code is distributed to you as part of your job. It wasn't stolen, it was provided to you with specific terms of use, namely that it only be used within the company. Is your argument that there can be no legal constraints beyond what "the GPL says" in this situation? That those constraints shouldn't apply, because they infringe your GPL-provided rights?

AshamedCaptain 3y ago

As the GPL FAQ says, distribution between employees of the same company may not even be considered "distribution" depending on the region. The analogy is stretching this too far.

dralley 3y ago
Fine - so make them third party contractors instead of employees of the same company. The end result is the same.
- AshamedCaptain 3y ago
  No, it's not. Even if they were employees of a different company that is a subcontractor, the jurisprudence is not clear at all. This is basically the "museum argument" which is quite old. It's an entire different story if you do distribute the software to your subcontractors for their use.