At 07:49 AM 11/1/2002 +0000, lester@... wrote:

>Sorry to bring this up, but I was at a seminar yesterday
>about 'Embeding with Linux'.
>
>The only speaker who covered licencing was the provider of
>an (expensive) comercial alternative and his take was that
>you can never secure your software in Linux.

Do you think he might have a bias? Open source licensing
is a bit of a nightmare, legally, and is largely untested
in court. There may be some change to that in December,
when MySQL and Progress are scheduled to have another go
at each other. Pragmatically, though, the rules are very
clear.

You can sell commercial applications on Linux and nobody
complains, even if you use gcc to create the programs and
clib to run time.

>I install SUSE Linux from the box - no changes to it so no
>licencing problem, and the customer can have a copy of the
>disks - if they want them.

Right. No problem there.

>I add Firebird, and just include the source as a matter of
>caution. ( You never know when you might need it on site and
>your laptop has failed <g> )

Fine.

>I setup the customers database with their requirements, and
>at present all access is from clients on Win98 machines, so
>no further access to the linux server so - as I see it - no
>licencing problems.

Absolutely none. If you were using a GPL database like MySQL,
you'd need a separate license for the client side DLL, but
not for Firebird.

>The sales pitch did hint that even your data was not 'safe'
>but we will ignore the bullshit.

Fascinating...

>The next step is obviously to put the client on a Linux
>machine, but again, if I make no changes to system I am
>working on, then I do NOT have to release the code of my
>application - provided that I follow the rules on creating
>that code.

From the Firebird/IPL perspective, the license for the
client code is the same whether it runs on Linux, FreeBSD,
Windows, AIX, or ... Providing Firebird software unchanged
puts no obligations on you. Even if you were to change
the Firebird software, "your" code could remain closed -
though you would have to publish the changes you made to
Firebird.

>Am I getting this right, and where should I have been
>looking to check it?

Look at IPL V1.



Regards,

Ann
www.ibphoenix.com
We have answers.