Re: Non-GPL modules

Ben Collins (bcollins@debian.org)
Thu, 18 Oct 2001 10:06:09 -0400


On Thu, Oct 18, 2001 at 03:38:50PM +0200, Adrian Bunk wrote:
> On Thu, 18 Oct 2001, Richard B. Johnson wrote:
>
> >...
> > In the business world, something as simple as puts("Hello World!");
> > MUST be kept a trade secret. If it was written by an employee
> > in the context of his or her job, the company's stockholders owns
> > that line of code so no employee, even the President, is allowed
> > to give it away.
> >...
>
> IOW: Companies like IBM, SAP, Sun and SGI that made code available under
> the GPL (e.g. as part of the linux kernel or with of relicensed programs)
> weren't allowed to do this???
>
>
> Am I allowed to consider this a bad joke?

Yeah. Let's not forget HP and Apple too. I mean what major hardware
vendors are left after that? Obviously someone has no idea how companies
work. Stockholders own nothing tangible other than a stake in the
company. They control the politics of the companies stradegy, but it's
the CEO on down that makes the decisions.

-- 
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