kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Karl Schmidt <karl@...>]

Dick, enough of this whining. The article on gnu.org is more than an opinion piece - unless 
you really don't know what/who gnu.org is. While I and others here do appreciate 
contributions made by all involved, your contributions do not entitle you to the rest of the 
code base. The GPL license is not revocable. You can take your lines of the code (and only 
just what you wrote) and do what you want, but you can't take Jean Pierre's code, even if 
you have modified it, without violating the GPL.

I'm hereby asking Jean Pierre if he could please make it clear to this list if he has ANY 
intent of turning this package away from GPL for Dick or anyone else. I think all involved 
should know here and now if this is going to remain an open GPL project or not. I don't 
think anyone else here is interested in seeing kicad become a proprietary package.

If Dick thinks he can just take the entire code base as his, I'm sure that FSF would help 
with the legal costs of stopping him. (To donate to FSF see 
http://www.fsf.org/associate/support_freedom/donate )

FSF has stepped up to the plate before and stopped people from appropriating GPL software 
for their own ends. The cost of IP litigation is not cheap, so I would recommend Dick to 
talk to an IP attorney before doing something stupid.

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Karl Schmidt EMail Karl@...
Transtronics, Inc. WEB http://xtronics.com
3209 West 9th Street Ph (785) 841-3089
Lawrence, KS 66049 FAX (785) 841-0434

A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.

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