[Nagiosplug-devel] Re: Nagios Plugins Used by Up.time

[Paul L. Allen]

Voon, Ton writes: 

> My understanding is that they would be allowed to redistribute the code if
> they retained the GPL and the copyright of the original source. 

IANAL but I believe you are correct.  They are allowed to incorporate
Nagios and plugins bundled with proprietary configuration and display
tools (which is what it looks like they're offering) but they have to
clearly indicate which parts are GPL, provide a copy of the licence
itself, etc. 

Filing off the copyright message output by conformant plugins is a
violation of copyright law.  Since Canada is a signatory to the Berne
convention, you don't even need a copyright statement for that to be
true.  In countries that are signatories to the Berne Convention,
copyright automatically exists in new works.  Because there is an
explicit copyright statement referring to the GPL, the terms of the GPL
apply. 

BTW, the (c) construct has no legal meaning in most countries, you must
use either the word "copyright" or the © symbol (using both is
superfluous).  To gain maximum protection in some countries, add the
sentence "All rights reserved." 

Apart from the obvious copyright violation regarding the plugins, it is
entirely possible that their proprietary browser interface is based upon
Nagios CGI code.  The GPL is quite clear that you're not allowed to
modify GPL code and redistribute the modified version to third parties
unless you offer your changes back to the original developers. 

-- 
Paul Allen
Softflare Support