Company claims their payment module is *not* GPL

[jsruok]

There is a company who has coded a payment module that I really need. So, I was requesting this company to send me all of the source code for their osC, but they said that

1) they are using the same osC which can downloaded from osC web site and

2) that the payment modules that they have made are not "fixed parts" of the osC package, so the modules are not GPL.

 

Is it possible to code a payment module which is *not* GPL?

[Harald Ponce de Leon]

This thread has been cleaned due to the misunderstandings of the GNU General Public License presented here. Please start a new topic if any questions brought up in the thread remain open.

 

To answer the issue at hand, all external work (for example, modules) that use and depend on the osCommerce framework must be licensed under the GNU General Public License or a GNU General Public License compatible license. This is due to the tainting effect the GNU General Public License has, and applies to all works and projects released under the GNU General Public License.

 

A person does not however have the right to works licensed under the GNU General Public License when it is not available to the general public. The author has the right to distribute the work only to one person if they wish to do so, and does not have to distribute it further.

 

The author can not apply restrictions with what the person is able to do (or not able to do) with the work that was distributed. The GNU General Public License protects the work by disallowing restrictions and provides the same freedom to the person that the author has. This means that the person receiving the work can distribute it to one or more people if they wish to do so, and these people are also able to distribute it further due to the freedom the GNU General Public License keeps intact.

 

If the work involved is in binary or encrypted form, then the person receiving the work *has the right* to access the source code. That person also has the same freedom to distribute the work involved in binary, encrypted, or in source form further.

 

Please contact a team member to discuss any issues with the GNU General Public License, specifically if you think a violation is occuring.

 

Thanks,