[ILUG] RMS: KDE in violation of GPL

[Wesley Darlington]

On Wed, Sep 06, 2000 at 01:22:31PM +0100, Paul Jakma wrote:
> On Wed, 6 Sep 2000, Wesley Darlington wrote:
> 
> > More generally, if you make modifications, you are only obliged to give
> > the source to people you give the binary to. 
> > 
> 
> actually i /think/ that that is a myth:
> 
> "2b: You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in
> whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part
> thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties
> under the terms of this License."
>
> so if i distribute modified version a GPL app to *anybody*, then i
> automatically have licenced my modified app to *everyone*.

Yeah, you've licensed it to everybody - giving somebody a licence and
having to give them source if they ask for it are different. 

I'm saying you can (in theory) tell people who come looking to you for 
source to take a hike, unless you gave them a binary.

> so if kev finds that joe has a modified version of his modified work
> given to joe by justin then kev (and ray and john and
> ...) automatically have a licence to that modified work.

Yeah, a licence. I can't do much with a licence. I need somebody to give me
source. And I can only require somebody to give me source if they first gave 
me a binary. And nobody *has* to give me a binary...

> also:
> 
> "6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the
> Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from
> the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program
> subject to these terms and conditions."
> 
> so if i mod kevin's acme app, and give a copy to joe bloggs, then joe
> bloggs has a licence from kevin, not me. 

Yeah, a licence. Joe can't go to kev and say `give me source' - or, rather,
he can, but kev can just say `go away!'. If joe comes to /you/ and says
`give me source', you are required to give it to him, since you gave
him a binary.

> > If I /do/ give somebody a modified binary, I have to
> > give them the source if they ask for it. 
> 
> nope.. it seems you give a licence to one, you have given a licence to
> all.

Yeah, a licence. But if I give somebody a binary (modified or not, actually,
now that I think about it) I have to give them source if they ask for it.

I'm kinda taking the licensing for granted here. Getting a licence to use
gnu software isn't a problem - almost everybody already has one, even if
they don't have any gnu software. It's getting hold of the source that
might be the tricky bit.

> uhmmm... IANAL :) 

No, me neither. :-)

Wesley.