7 Aug
2009
7 Aug
'09
11:51 a.m.
On 7 Aug 2009, at 12:55, Raymond Martin wrote:
On Friday 07 August 2009 06:51:08 Paul Davis wrote:
[...]
Perhaps you should read that paragraph again in the context of how
this
whole discussion came about. Known free software, with a history of
being
free, distributed under the GPL with the source code in the past,
was not
being distributed with the source code at a point by the very same
people.
So where would the altered terms be if the binary was decompiled and
source
distributed for the application under consideration?
This whole strand of the discussion came about because you had
threatened to release a decompilation of Bob's ***MODIFIED*** preview
release and I said:
"Until and unless you have Bob's preview source files with GPL
headers all present and correct, you don't have a license for the mods
in that code."
I wrote that sentence quite carefully but here it is again with some
emphasis on the pertinent words:
Until and unless you have Bob's ***PREVIEW*** source files with GPL
headers all present and correct, you don't have a license for ***THE
MODS*** in that code.
On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 6:30 PM, Ralf
Mardorf<ralf.mardorf(a)alice-dsl.net
>
wrote:
Chris
Cannam wrote:
For emphasis, I just want to paste that sentence (and the following
one) again for Raymond, with attribution:
Eben Moglen, attorney for the FSF: "The claim that a GPL violation
could lead to the forcing open of proprietary code that has
wrongfully
included GPL'd components is simply wrong. There is no provision in
the Copyright Act to require distribution of infringing work on
altered terms. " On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 7:46 PM, Raymond
Martin<laseray(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
> What possible counter-argument can there be left?
http://lwn.net/Articles/61292/ (same guy you just cited, explaining
why you're wrong)
Chris
"The claim that a GPL violation could lead to the forcing open of
proprietary code that has wrongfully included GPL'd components is
simply
wrong." [...]
An extensive look at license vs. contract for the GPL is found in
Enforcing the GPL - http://www.sapnakumar.org/EnfGPL.pdf
Yes. The Moglen quote we're now discussing appears on page 15. (And
yes that document discusses the possibility that one day someone might
persuade a court that the GPL is actually a contract, but walk before
you try to run eh?)
~ Simon