From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,faf964ea4531e6af X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 1025b4,43ae7f61992b3213 X-Google-Attributes: gid1025b4,public From: Robert Dewar Subject: Re: GPL and "free" software Date: 1999/04/29 Message-ID: <7g8fid$c7c$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 472097826 References: <7fibd5$jc7$1@news2.tor.accglobal.net> <7g5qgg$n7t@www.inetnow.net> <372753FF.11F381CF@noah.dhs.org> <7g7ro3$q91@www.inetnow.net> <7g7tlc$j5g$1@jetsam.uits.indiana.edu> X-Http-Proxy: 1.0 x7.dejanews.com:80 (Squid/1.1.22) for client 205.232.38.14 Organization: Deja News - The Leader in Internet Discussion X-Article-Creation-Date: Thu Apr 29 02:18:56 1999 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,gnu.misc.discuss X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla/4.04 [en] (OS/2; I) Date: 1999-04-29T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article <7g7tlc$j5g$1@jetsam.uits.indiana.edu>, owinebar@ezinfo.ucs.indiana.edu (Lynn Winebarger) wrote: > Well, I think it would be legal for a company to > distribute patches (under a stricter license even), as > long as they did not also distribute the original work. > Not that I would want to encourage that behaviour. > > Lynn Lynn, you are expressing legal opinions here without giving a basis for the opinion. As I noted in a previous post, Richard Stallman *strongly* disagrees with this assessment. He takes what seems to be the quite reasonable position that a patch file which only has meaning with regard to a work A is from a legal point of view a derived work, which would be protected. Note that the integrity of the GPL depends on this position, so this is not a trivial point. It has not been specifically adjudicated in court, but you should be aware that if you take action to follow your legal opinion, you might trigger a court to make the decision :-) -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own