Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body

[Caroline Ford]

2009/6/22 Janez Pers <janez.pers at fe.uni-lj.si>:
> Hardy, Allan wrote:
>
>> As I understand the GPL I can charge you say $1000 to acquire my GPL based
>> software.  If you choose to pay you can then use the software under the GPL.
>>  Meaning you can give it away for free.  (which makes me changing upfront
>> sorta dumb business practice).
>> What I can't do is charge you $1000 and then tell you that you must also
>> charge.  I cant override/change the rights the GPL affords you.
>
>> Same goes with registration.  I can offer you my GPL products and require
>> you to register, for free or not, in order to get the download.  You can
>> then offer the product to others under the GPL.
>
> Precisely that's why there is a problem. Licensing scheme for ZigBee
> requires that everyone who is developing the code for commercial
> purpose is member of organization ($3000 = non free, $0 = free,
> although this could be debatable).
>
> To use the code, you would have to comply both with GPL and ZigBee
> alliance's licensing requirements. Following GPL you cannot override
> the rights that GPL affords the user of the code, but following
> the ZigBee alliance license (based on which you were allowed to
> develop GPLed code in the first place), you HAVE TO. (the user has to
> be alliance member if he wants to develop the code further for
> commercial purpose, or he cannot use it for commercial purpose,
> if he is not member).
>
> Therefore, in general, the code cannot be used without breaking one of those
> two licenses, which essentially makes the alliance
> requirements incompatible with GPL (since GPL cannot be changed,
> the alliance licensing rules have to be changed to be compatible with
> GPL).

If the alliance would like linux support for their widgets then they
know what to do, right? Why would you want to restrict yourself to
windows and mac?

You didn't say what zigbee was - but your link mentioned IEEE 802.15.4
Wireless Personal Area Networks. If the IEEE are involved then there
may be a way round this.

Caroline