[Zope-dev] ZPL and GPL licensing issues

[Erik Enge]

On Thu, 21 Jun 2001, Nils Kassube wrote:

> * Jim Penny <jpenny@universal-fasteners.com> [2001-06-20 19:12]:
>  
> > As far as I can tell you are wrong, but there are certainly gray
> > areas.  The last time this came up I wrote such a scenario up and 
> > tried to get FSF clarification.  Nothing ever came back.
> 
> I got a clarification from the FSF. It's in the mailing list archives
> at [...]

So, the outcome is that one cannot use GPL Zope Python Products and
distribute the system.  That sounds logical, since ZPL is not GPL
compatible.

What then, is to "distribute the system"?  If I install GUM (GPL) on a
clients Zope instance, have I distributed anything?  Is it putting it on
the same website, same tarball, under the same invoice of consultant
services or what?  Help.

Can I raise I question without getting flamed (since the question isn't
rethorical but a sincear one): was the "advertisement"-clauses in the ZPL
meant to secure Zope's progress to become a big and respected piece of
software?  Has it not secured that now?  My real question is: what good
will the advertisement-clauses do us now?  What harm would it do to remove
them?  (No, that last one isn't rethorical :-)