[LAD] At the hands of Professor Keller and Raymond

[Chris Cannam]

2009/7/27 Jörn Nettingsmeier <nettings at folkwang-hochschule.de>:
> which means that raymond has a point. and he is also entitled to forking
> your project any way he sees fit.

It isn't necessarily the case that he is entitled to fork it.  Raymond
has repeatedly said that it was distributed to him without a GPL
license.

If a program is distributed to you under some proprietary terms, but
it uses some GPL code, then it is presumably violating the terms of
the GPL and so should not have been distributed.  Possible remedies
depending on the circumstances might include GPL'ing the program or
ceasing distribution.  But these are remedies between that program's
distributors and the authors of the GPL'd code; the recipients of the
improperly licensed program can't make any such remedy themselves.
You can't just decide unilaterally that the ostensibly proprietary
code was improperly licensed and so go and copy it to all your
friends.

In this case, the situation is probably moot since Bob has said he
intended to publish under the GPL from the outset, but I think that is
the only thing that might make this action defensible.


Chris