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,aae53a1e1005187e X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Robert Dewar Subject: Re: Ada 83 Booch components Date: 2000/03/23 Message-ID: <8bbq4b$7uh$1@nnrp1.deja.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 601091590 References: <953594844.1480.0.nnrp-11.9e9848fa@news.demon.co.uk> <38D6CB9D.6342@li.net> <38D7CB35.476AE4FA@res.raytheon.com> <8b959t$9um$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <8bavjr$aik1@news.cis.okstate.edu> X-Http-Proxy: 1.0 x25.deja.com:80 (Squid/1.1.22) for client 205.232.38.14 Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. X-Article-Creation-Date: Thu Mar 23 00:56:51 2000 GMT X-MyDeja-Info: XMYDJUIDrobert_dewar Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla/4.61 [en] (OS/2; I) Date: 2000-03-23T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article <8bavjr$aik1@news.cis.okstate.edu>, dstarner98@aasaa.ofe.org wrote: > >Well of course you can't. They are copyrighted, and absent a > >specific license from the copyright holder, you can't make a > >copy let alone give it to someone else. It is not good enough > >to hear third hand that Grady says it's OK with him (even if > >he is indeed the copyright holder of record). > > If you have permission from the copyright holder to copy it, > you have permission to copy it. That's what we mean by a specific license to copy! > It doesn't matter whether it' > a formal license It needs to be formal in a legal sense, otherwise there is a legitimate course of copyright action. Of course you probably are interpreting formal a bit wrong here. It does not have to be a signed document, for instance a verbal commitment is probably good enough if provable. > or whether you got it first hand. Well here you have to be careful. If the copyright holder publishes a general license, then that's fine, but what I was warning of here is that it is not good enough to read on CLA a message from A saying that B has said it is OK! > (How many people > have first hand approval from any of the Linux copyright holders > to copy Linux?) Anyone accessing the Linux sources or a prepackaged binary version of Linux obtains a copy of the license agreement that allows this copying. All Linux copyright holders have assented to the issuing of this license. If you were to get a copy of Linux from the combined copyright holders that had a proprietary license (rather than the GPL), you would NOT be able to copy it. In fact this is unlikely, because it would be very difficult to get 100% of the Linux copyright holders to agree on such a distribution. > Now a formal license in the handwriting of the author > would make it clearer, but if the author tells you can copy ^^^ there's the important word :-) > it, you can. The handwriting is irrelevant, a license is formal precisely if it meets the legal requirements for a license. If you meet Joe in the street, and he tells you, sure, go ahead and copy X (in which he holds a copyright interest), and there is no evidence of any kind of this interchange, and no apparent reason for Joe to have given this permission, Joe would likely prevail in a subsequent course of copyright action (your defence that you thought Joe had given you permission might be a reasonable explanation, but I doubt any court would find it a valid license given the standards of proof involved here. People often are too sloppy in understanding when they can and can not make copies. I have seen plenty of court cases result from such sloppiness. > > -- > David Starner - dstarner98@aasaa.ofe.org > Only a nerd would worry about wrong parentheses with > square brackets. But that's what mathematicians are. > -- Dr. Burchard, math professor at OSU > Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy.