Ethereal-dev: Re: [Ethereal-dev] Ethereal code

Note: This archive is from the project's previous web site, ethereal.com. This list is no longer active.

From: Guy Harris <gharris@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 06 Sep 2004 11:35:49 -0700
Raghavendra Pai (ragpai) wrote:

If YES, Can I use the code for commercial purpose ?

I've added a FAQ about this:

	http://www.ethereal.com/faq.html#q1.3

It says

	Q 1.3: Can I use Ethereal commercially?

A: Yes, if, for example, you mean "I work for a commercial organization; can I use Ethereal to capture and analyze network traffic in our company's networks or in our customer's networks?"

If you mean "Can I use Ethereal as part of my commercial product?", see the next entry.

"The next entry" is

	http://www.ethereal.com/faq.html#q1.4

and says

	Q 1.4: Can I use Ethereal as part of my commercial product?

A: As noted, Ethereal is licended under the GNU General Public License. The GPL imposes conditions on your use of GPL'ed code in your own products; you cannot, for example, make a "derived work" from Ethereal, by making modifications to it, and then sell the resulting derived work and not allow recipients to give away the resulting work. You must also make source to your changes to Ethereal available to all recipients of your modified version. See the GPL FAQ for more details; in particular, note the answer to the question about modifying a GPLed program and selling it commercially, and the question about linking GPLed code with other code to make a proprietary program.

You can combine a GPLed program such as Ethereal and a commercial program as long as they communicate "at arm's length", as per this item in the GPL FAQ.

The version at the URL given above has links to the GPL, the GPL FAQ, and the items in the GPL FAQ to which it refers.