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Which raises the fascinating question of whether it’s legal to sell forks of GPL software under a separate rider agreement that your customers won’t distribute it. I.e. you license it to them under the GPL (which lets them redistribute it), but sign a separate agreement with them in which they promise not to exercise that right.

I think that’s probably illegal, but I have definitely heard of companies doing it.






The GPL’s FAQ says no, you can’t give GPL software with an additional NDA. But as usual with licenses: I suppose it was never tested in court.

I think it would depend on the agreement and what you would lose when exercising your GPL rights.

For example, with RedHat your subscription for security updates/etc can be terminated.


if it's your software you can simply sell them a proprietary license separately

That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about software that people are obligated to distribute under a GPL-compatible license. For example, some random company’s private fork of the Linux kernel.

Interesting thought experiment and at the same time a terrible real world experiment.



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