Does a project that was never released to public comply to GPL license?

Question

Assume you develop a program that you were going to release to public. You develop it with aim to release it later under GPL license. Thus you add all those "NO WARRANTY" marks, and include a copyright and license notice to each file.

However, something happens that prevents you from releasing the project, so it just sleeps on your hard drive unmaintained and never sees the light.

GPL contains many clauses that govern propagation of software and creation of derived work. But I'm sure it imposes some implications on the work licensed.

In other words, does the software described above comply to GPL terms?

Answer 1

GPL requires that:

1. Anyone you distribute it to has the right to redistribute it under the GPL, and
2. Anyone you distribute it to has the right to a copy of the source code.

If you don't distribute it to anyone, you're still good under the GPL.

Answer 2

If your work has all the steps for GPL compliance, and the final thing to do is actually publish it (which you never do) is the only issue at hand; you are most definitely GPL compliant.

If you were compliant to being with, and your code is never released to see the light of day, why would you not be compliant? GPL does not force you to publish your work if you choose to keep it on that lonely hard drive.

Answer 3

IANAL, but here is my understanding: If you wrote the entire piece of software (or you have permission from the copyright owners), you can do whatever you want with the software. If you aren't linking with any GPL software, then you can still license it under a GPL-incompatible license, even if you already distributed it, since you own the copyright.

For example, I could write a program and distribute it under the GPL. If you downloaded a copy, you would have to comply with the terms of the GPL. But I could still distribute it to someone else under a non-GPL license.

That is how software like MySQL can be distributed under the GPL but also sold (and one of the main reasons that Oracle's acquisition of Sun was held up by the EU).

See also: Multi-licensing on Wikipedia.