It is not so that he is obliged to share the code with anyone who requests it. Only when a binary of GPL code is released through any medium, the source code should also be made public. If the source code for that binary has not been published, anyone who downloads the binary can demand the source code from the person who distributes the binary. Now, in the case of binaries that are not public like E-Cycles (Blender + modified Cycles), only the one who acquires the binary can demand that the source code be published only for him. So to get the source code, Iām afraid you will need to buy E-Cycles.
Once you get the source code, you can make it public if you want.
E-Cycles , its not a Cycles fork its a Blender fork so E-Cycles its GPL nowā¦
I have the binary , where i can get de source code??
If you bought E-Cycles from the original author, you should ask him for the source code (or at least a link to download it).
If you obtained the binary by other means, you should demand the source code from the owner of the site who released the binary you downloaded.
According to you, if I use GPL code and sell it for example for 1000000000 dollars only who buys it can demand the source code from me?
Donāt you think itās a good way to bypass the GPL?
I just give a 10000000% discount to anyone I want and thatās it.
Correct.
There is no bypassing of the GPL with that. This is allowed according to the GPL.
Again, not a lawyer.
Thatās right,(regardless of the ridiculous price you mention because that would be a bad deal and no one would buy the software) itās what Red Hat and others have done all along.
The idea of the GPL is that you can study/modify/redistribute the code of the binary that you obtained. The author is selling the binary in this case, and you can demand the source code associated with the binary that he sold you.
And the author is obliged to show the code. Not only to whoever he wants, because he has sold it, but to whoever requests it, he has used GPL code (Blender), and has benefited from it, I now want to benefit from his code and according to the GPL that is not only possible, but compulsoryā¦
you donāt need to be a lawyer expert in licensing to clarify this point is in the FAQ .
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html
You can not mix GPL code with Apache code, because it invalidates the Apache license of Cycles standalone ā¦ so you can not make a merge with your contributions to the code ā¦ I do not ask for a merge of your code with cycles, if not see your code ā¦ where is the problem when your license is GPL?
If you add GPL code to Cycles , Cycles loses its Apache license and that canāt be and @brecht knows why.
Why not? just because you say so?
Itās not like that. But if you are so sure of what you say, you make a formal complaint to the GNU project/Free Software Foundation. [email protected]
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Its like that, but i will stop here cause no one matter GPL
Sorry for being so annoying, in defending the opensource
Because of the excerpt of the GPL FAQ (https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#GPLRequireSourcePostedPublic) you posted here:
Cycles Requests
Only the programās users can request the source code, which is the E-Cycles users, meaning the people who paid for it.
You should still send an email to https://www.gnu.org and explain to them that they have made a syntactic error.
PD. and now yes , Iām sorry if I donāt answer more about this.
You are missing a couple of words: āreleaseā and āpublicā. I had already explained it to you. If you downloaded the binary from somewhere, you can require to the maintainer of the site from which you downloaded the binary to publish the source code. E-Cycles is not public and the creator cannot answer for what others do on other sites.
Butā¦ you write an email denouncing E-Cycles license violation to the mail address that I have published above. You will have to write less than what you have already written in this thread.
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I donāt care about E-Cycles, I donāt intend to denounce anyone, thatās in everyoneās moral, I only defend the philosophy of open-source we have Blender thanks to that philosophy, and I donāt want us to forget thatā¦
Iāve moved the GPL discussion from the Cycles thread.
Feel free to continue the discussion here, but please remain respectful. Thanks.
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Hi @SavMartin, I canāt see the problem here: just ask Mathieu for the code.
If you have rights to receive it, he will certainly send you a copy.
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Iāve been reading the conversation and I didnāt want to chime in, mainly because I donāt have time, but Iām seeing several GPL interpretations that I donāt understand why are they happening in this way.
Lets set two kind of things
1.- āOriginal programā, fully programmed by one person and made public (no matter if itās sold or not) by that person under GPL license scheme.
2.- A āDerivativeā, a program that is a by-product of another GPL software, the whole code is not original from the author of the derivative, but just a part of it.
In the first case, what many of you are saying applies, only the users can ask for the code, but the mistake lies in your interpretation of what a user is.
A user, as @SavMartin has explained, itās not a customer, since the software is licensed under GPL, it can be shared, as soon as someone gets the binary and uses it, becomes a user of the software, and that user can ask for the code to the original programmer of the code, no matter how he got the binary, there is no āruleā that tells you that you must ask the code to the person that gave you the binary, if that person is not the author that person will tell you āask the authorā, and you have the right to ask for it to the author of the code and the author of the code has to give you the code, as simple as that, thatās GPL.
Not sure why you interpret in other way, but I had a big conversation some time ago about GPL with the FSF and I have studied the license pretty well, Iām not a lawyer, but if we need a lawyer every time we have to deal with this kind of things, where is the open source spirit and freedom?
And in any case, this is something that is pretty clear in the GPL.
If you have questions about selling GPL software you can refer to this page:
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html
As soon as a user becomes a user, itās a user, it seems pretty straight forward, but for some reason some of you are considering a user just a direct customer or a direct receiver of the binary by the author, and thatās not the case, a user is a user, thatās what lies behind the GPL.
Now, regarding āDerivativesā.
A āDerivativeā is a software that is a modified version of another software released under GPL, in reality all Blender users are E-Cycles users, because the software itself is Blender, E-Cycles itās just a modified version of Blender, in that situation any Blender user is entitled to ask for the source code fo E-Cycles.
But letās analyse what the FSF says for this situation:
Does the GPL require that source code of modified versions be posted to the public? (#GPLRequireSourcePostedPublic)
The GPL does not require you to release your modified version, or any part of it. You are free to make modifications and use them privately, without ever releasing them. This applies to organisations (including companies), too; an organisation can make a modified version and use it internally without ever releasing it outside the organisation.
First thing to notice: the GPL does not force you to make your modifications public, so you donāt have to share your source with anyone, you can even use it inside an organisation and itās considered to remain āprivateā, because it can only be used INSIDE your organization.
(E.G.: Tangent Animation AFAIK, and Iāll speak about this case later)
But if you release the modified version to the public in some way, the GPL requires you to make the modified source code available to the programās users, under the GPL.
Notice how here it says āif you release the modified version to the public in some wayā so itās not just if you release it freely or for free, it is in SOME way, it can be paid, it can be free, it can be as a download or it can be as selling an old diskette.
In that situation the GPL requires you to make the modified source code available to the programās users, it does not say to your customers or to the people you sold it out, or to the people you gave it personally, it says to the program users, in this case the program is not the modified version, the program is Blender, and any Blender user is entitled to ask for the source code of the modified version of Blender.
Now, even in the weird case where you decide to not consider a Blender user as an E-Cycles user, something hard to defend because 99% of the software is original Blender, any person with an E-Cycles binary can ask for the source code, not just customers, but users, to the original author of the modifications.
If you donāt share the code when a user asks you for it, you are breaking the GPL, you are āclosingā your source and you are eliminating the freedom, but thenā¦ what freedom does the GPL give you as a developer of a āDerivativeā?
Thus, the GPL gives permission to release the modified program in certain ways, and not in other ways; but the decision of whether to release it is up to you.
The freedom of the GPL lies in that you are free to share or not your modifications, but to benefit the community and to not damage the original authors of the software, the GPL forces you to share the source code with any users of the software that asks you for it.
Thatās one of the main reasons why our build source code is fully public on github, the other reason is because we are not the original authors of the patches we use, the majority of them are made by @lukasstockner97, @StefanW and @scorpion81, and even when I personally have refactored some of them to make them compatible with todayās master, and when I also have added several modifications myself, I think the core of the improvement is from them, so our build has to be kept public, because they are kind enough to collaborate and release their work to the public and I have to respect that.
To be honest I would like @Ton to chime in here, because I think this is an important topic, making all this things clear will settle many fears of studios wanting to do some custom version of Blender for interior work (with custom pipeline tools and some things that they donāt want to release, or that are not useful for the public) but they are afraid that they will be forced to release it, something that itās not always possible due to NDAās or contracts with clients.
Tangent animation has their own build, and AFAIK the current version itās not made public, however many of the improvements we get here in Cycles are thanks to Tangent, made by @StefanW, and I think also Luca Rodd has something to be with that (not sure).
They are not forced to make their source public because their Blender version is not public.
I hope I helped to clarify some of the doubts here, GPL is what it is, itās pretty clear, and as long as you want to discuss Open Source matter with the FSF you can reach them through their email or through twitter or any other means.
If you want to discuss Open Source compatibility with Closed Source, thatās another matter and you will have to hire them as lawyers to clarify any doubt.
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Could you please clarify this ? Iām not entirely sure what you mean by āall Blender users are E-Cycles usersā. This does not make sense to me. For instance, I am not an E-Cycles user (I have not bought it from Mathieu) -so how could I be an E-Cycles user, legally speaking ?