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, MSGID_RANDY 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: dewarr@my-dejanews.com Subject: Re: GPL and "free" software Date: 1999/05/08 Message-ID: <7h1elo$eau$1@nnrp1.deja.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 475507426 References: <7fibd5$jc7$1@news2.tor.accglobal.net> <7g5qgg$n7t@www.inetnow.net> <372753FF.11F381CF@noah.dhs.org> <7g7ro3$q91@www.inetnow.net> <7g7tlc$j5g$1@jetsam.uits.indiana.edu> X-Http-Proxy: 1.0 x4.dejanews.com:80 (Squid/1.1.22) for client 205.232.38.10 Organization: Deja News - The Leader in Internet Discussion X-Article-Creation-Date: Sat May 08 13:36:56 1999 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,gnu.misc.discuss X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla/4.5 [en] (WinNT; U) Date: 1999-05-08T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article <7g7tlc$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 It would be useful when people state legal opinions of this nature, if they indicate the source (e.g. their own legal expertise, or court cases). Otherwise it is very hard to identify substantive input from guesses about what people think should be the case from an informal point of view. The trouble with the latter is that so often "common sense" can mislead you when it comes to legal issues. This is particularly true in the software copyright business (I base this observation on my experience in acting as an expert witness in several court cases involving alledged copyright infringement, and on having read the principle court decisions in this area). In addition, the field is changing very rapidly as congress takes action on a number of bills that have a significant effect on copyrights in general, and software copyrights in particular. An example: If you have a (legitimate) copy of a program on your hard disk, then does executing it involve making a copy? Tricky question, and courts have disagreed, it is not a trivial question to answer at all! The point is that in some sense there is a copy in memory .. what sense? Well that's the question to be answered! -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own