[LAD] Impro-Visor created on sourceforge

Chris Cannam cannam at all-day-breakfast.com
Thu Aug 6 07:51:30 UTC 2009


On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 2:11 AM, drew Roberts<zotz at 100jamz.com> wrote:
> On Wednesday 29 July 2009 02:53:35 Arnout Engelen wrote:
>> You cannot claim someone failed to distribute software under the GPL, and
>> at the same time take said software and excercise the rights that *would*
>> have been granted to you *if* the software was distributed under the GPL.
>
> I think you can.

Arnout was referring to the case where the software was provided to
you under something other than the GPL, violating someone else's
license in the process.  In fact, you agreed with him in another
message you posted only six minutes before that one.

I think that having come in late to this thorny discussion, you're
tangling up two different debates:

 * if someone provides software to me under the GPL but doesn't do a
proper job of complying with its requirements, am I at liberty to fix
that in my own redistribution of it? -- yes, and this is presumably
what you're answering above

 * if someone provides software to me that is _not_ apparently under
the GPL, but it turns out to contain GPL'd code and so should have
been under the GPL, am I at liberty to "fix" that by assuming my
rights under the GPL, obtaining the source code (perhaps covertly) and
redistributing that? -- no, not at all, and this is what Arnout and I
were referring to in this thread and what your previous email appeared
to agree with

The second question becomes broadly irrelevant here if  we are
prepared to accept Bob did convey his intention that the Impro-Visor
code be GPL'd, but Arnout and I were responding to the blanket "use of
GPL code makes it GPL" (which would imply the second question above).


Chris



More information about the Linux-audio-dev mailing list