DM42

[Thomas Okken]

The first time I realized this was when I talked to Markus Gonser about parasites putting up clones of existing GPL programs on the iTunes App Store (there are at least two, possibly three, such clones of Free42 for iOS, and I'm *not* referring to Byron Foster's 42s!). He told me that he had taken the m48 source code down from his web site, and was only giving it to people who installed his app. He acknowledged that this represented only a minor speed bump against parasites, since once someone has the source, they can still redistribute it, and sell derived works (*), all they want, but he felt it was better than doing nothing.

In the same vein, SwissMicros are only obligated to make the DM42 source code available to their customers, BUT if one of those customers wants to redistribute that code, they are free to do so.

I think it makes sense. If I'm a small business selling a GPL-based product, making source code available to my paying customers represents a minor and predictable cost, but if I had to provide the code to absolutely everyone who asked me for it, that could cost significant amounts of money and time (can't do anything about the time part, even if you charge a fee for the code). It wouldn't be reasonable to force people to deal with that. The important thing is that they can't *restrict* what their *customers* can do with the code, including redistribution.

(*) Even if "derived" means "rename it, slap a new skin and icon on it and build it, otherwise completely unchanged"...