On Aug 25, 7:03*am, Martin Gregorie
wrote:
On Wed, 25 Aug 2010 06:35:48 -0500, brian whatcott wrote:
Then I found you couldn't download LK8000, perhaps because a copyright
owner of XCsoar was objecting. * *Too bad.

Nah, its just XCSoar politics. LK8000 is a fork off XCSoar and, as that
is Open Source, copyright considerations don't apply.

Currently downloads are restricted to beta testers. I have a copy of
1.20i but then I've been corresponding with the developer since he was
working on the XCSoar 5.2.x PNA version. Contact me off-news if you'd
like his contact details.

--
martin@ * | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org * * * |

What? Copyright very much applies to just about all open source
software. Unless an developer explicitly give up his copyright rights.
Most open source license agreements center around assenting the
copyright rights of the developers. Those developers often use those
rights to ensure others cannot restrict the abiliy for people to
freely copy and use that software and any changes to it made by
others.

XCSoar is licensed under the GPL license. That license (in various
versions) asserts the copyright right of the authors and uses
copyright to require modifications to the source code to continue to
include the original copyright, GPL license and to publish source code
to any modifications to the GPL licensed code. Modifications to the
GPL code must be published for any software made available publicly.
None of this should be a surprise to any developer who has read the
GPL.


Daryl