From: Fergal Daly (fergal at domain esatclear.ie)
Date: Wed 17 May 2000 - 15:29:00 IST
At 15:16 17/05/00, lbedford at domain wbtsystems.com wrote:
>On Wed, May 17, 2000 at 03:09:56PM +0100, John P. Looney wrote:
> > Yes. If you give them the executable, they should be provided with
> > source, and the license, if they ask for it.
>Hmm, I'm not convinced on this matter... GPL doesn't guarantee that you
>have to give someone the program. So, giving it to people in the company
>for internal use should be okay. The company can then restrict who you
>can give the software to... so I couldn't give it to someone outside
>the company.
There are a couple of issues:
Does the ability to run the binary mean the program has been distributed to
you? Kate reckons yes, but what about if you run it by activating a CGI
script (or over X as Aaron just pointed out). One could argue that the
program is no longer running on your PC, but the PC in front of you in work
isn't your PC either.
Also if the "if they ask for it" only applies to source, the GPL says you
must include one of either the source, a written offer or the information
about the offer you received. Doesn't this mean that every time you install
a GPL program you must _give_ all users who could potentially use it one of
the above, not just _give if they ask_. Bit of a pain for users and admins.
Fergal
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