Just to state my position, I have worked as a professional commercial software developer since 1994. I think the GPL is appropriate for work I do outside customer contracts. [Nils Kassube] | The problem is not that a client who paid for custom development | will get the source. It's the fact that you have to release the | source code of an enhanced GPL'ed component (and possibly stuff | built with it) for everyone else, too. (complete version at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html) -- from the GPL 3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following: a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or, b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or, -- These are the most relevant sections. It's pretty clear that you are only obligated to distribute source to the parties you've distributed object code / executable form to. | Another issue is that in a complex object oriented environment | like Zope it's difficult to determine if you only used a GPL'ed | component or "embraced and extended" it. Actually the embrace and extension was a silly Microsoft-joke, the definition in the license text is more verbose: .. a "work based on the Program" means either the Program or any derivative work under copyright law: that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it, either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another language. .. I don't think a zope site could be defined as a 'work'. -Magnus