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Santa wrote:

> Can opensource code (RH/Debian/SUSE) modified for inhouse firewall
> platform

Yes.

> and can be sold in for commercial use?.

Yes, but you have to GPL licence any modifications you make to GPL code,
and provide a means by which your customers (and any third party) may
obtain the source code of those changes. You may only charge a
reasonable copying fee for any source code distributed (in other words,
no $1M source code fees).

> Is this GPL coers
> this?.

Yes. You can read the GPL (it's not in legalese) and see for yourself
Take a look at http://www.fsf.org/licenses/gpl.html

>Or Is there any royalty or licensing fee has to pay per unit?.

No. No royalty or licencing fees are permitted on GPL'ed code. Also,
/you/ cannot charge royalties or licencing fees on your changes to
GPL'ed code, nor can you prevent redistribution of the GPL'ed code.

> What if some modifications does for some of the code?. Thanks.

Your modifications are yours, copyright and all.

If you modify a GPL'ed program, then you must licence your modifications
with the same licence.

If you modify a program under another OSS licence, then you must follow
that licences requirements for your changes.

Finally, if you modify a program that has a propriatary licence, you
/must/ negotiate with the author of the original program for the right
to do so, and the right to distribute your changes.


Remember, you are /not/ crafting a new product for which you have full
IP control. You are /borrowing/ someone elses work, and adding to it.
The conditions under which the other person /permits/ you to change
/his/ product is the licence you have to follow. If the other person
permits you to change /his/ code, with the requirement that you
distribute according to the GPL, then that's what you have to do to
satisfy /that/ licence. The resulting product is not exclusively yours.

- --

Lew Pitcher, IT Consultant, Enterprise Application Architecture
Enterprise Technology Solutions, TD Bank Financial Group

(Opinions expressed here are my own, not my employer's)
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