Re: Win32Ada

[kenner@lab.ultra.nyu.edu (Richard Kenner)]

In article <734eo8$41v$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> dennison@telepath.com writes:
>Lets give an example: Suppose we have a company named BDU who maintains a
>really nifty GPL GUI builder. They continually make improvements, but only
>publicly release these improvements at the pitifully slow rate of once a
>year. Now suppose a crook who we will call CJ breaks into the offices of BDU
>and copies the latest version of the GUI builder onto a floppy.
>
>CJ is clearly guilty of breaking and entering. But does the GPL make it
>illegal for him to possess that copy of the BDU GUI builder? Does the GPL
>make it illegal for him to disseminate copies of the stolen version of the
>GUI builder from his prison cell PC? No, and no.

I'd agree the GPL doesn't make illegal, but I'd be very concerned
about a criminal charge of "possession of stolen property" against
anybody who knowingly accepted such material since it *was* stolen and
is a licenced and copyrighted work.

>How about civil court? Now let's suppose that BDU actually uses their
>pitifuly slow release schedule to make themselves money. They give out
>intermediate versions of their GUI builder to customers who pay BDU for
>"support". Now word gets around on usenet about where to get CJ's stolen
>intermediate version, and BDU looses half their "support" customers. Can they
>sue CJ for the lost income?

>Yes, you can always sue someone. But does the GPL protect CJ in court from
>this charge? That's a bit foggy. The answer probably depends on the relative
>quality of their laywers. :-)

Perhaps, but I'd say that in the hypothetical you give, BDU would have no
claim because they *are* distributing it to their customers who have no
legal prohibition against redistributing it.  The fact that it happened to
have been distributed due to a theft was incidental: BDU took no
"precautions" (and under the GPL indeed could taken none: that's the whole
point) against redistribution and thus would have no claim.

Note the parenthetical part of the above sentence is also a major issue.
By putting "support" in quotes above, you imply a situation where the
primary value being provided by BDU to its customers is access to the
latest version, not some actual service being provided (and you confirm
this by hypothesizing that half the customers would be lost if a copy got
out on the net).  But this is not a practical scenario because any of BDU's
customers could themselves offer the "support" at a lower price. So the
entire business model you hypothesize is impossible in the first place.

However, we can look at a similar hypothetical, where BDU hadn't released
the software *to anybody* because it wasn't finished yet.  Now suppose CJ
distributes *this* version, the origin of it gets muddled on the net, and the
reputation of BDU becomes one of a company that has badly broken software,
due to this software being available.

In that case, I *do* think that CJ would be liable for such damages because
BDU certainly took precautions to prevent that buggy version from getting
out.  However, the possibility of somebody in prison for breaking and
entering actually being able to *pay* such damages is low enough that this
entire scenario is vanishingly unlikely.