Re: Market pressures for more reliable software

["Marin David Condic" <marin.condic.auntie.spam@pacemicro.com>]

If your customer is, say, the Air Force & you sell them a program that has
GPL code in it & give them the source, then I don't think that in the case
where the Air Force were to share the system with the Navy would mean that
the Navy must now get the source as well. After all, the United States of
America is in posession of the source code somewhere and if they decide not
to let the left hand know what the right hand is doing, that's not an issue
for the FSF to go suing over. (Besides, in order to sue the United States,
you first have to get the permission of the United States.) Same as if
Ford-Detroit decides not to send the source to Ford-England. Its an internal
matter for Ford.

Sending embedded code to some other location and energetically disassembling
the computer on which it is stored doesn't give the foreign government at
your new storage site/test facility on their soil the right to demand the
source under terms of the GPL. Its still your bomb - you just decided to put
it somewhere inconvenient to some other country and then turn it on and test
it. After all, you neither sold them nor gave them the software. Chances
are, they'd want you to take back the whole delivery package anyway. They
may return the favor and when one side or the other decides to give up, the
winner can make it part of the terms of surrender that they cough up the
GPL'ed code if they want.

As for the NATO allies getting some system that included GPL code? I'd guess
that the U.S. as a member of NATO could say that they are in posession of
the source - hence NATO is in posession of the source. No need for them to
give it to the branch office of NATO that calls itself France or England -
just like the first case.

Besides, its all moot under the terms and conditions of Catch 22 which
clearly states: "The Army can do anything you can't stop it from doing."
They're the guys holding all the guns and bombs. If they don't feel like
redistributing the source code and feel rather strongly about it, what can
FSF, et alia do about it? Go to war?

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Al Christians" <achrist@easystreet.com> wrote in message
news:3B2E2261.303FE952@easystreet.com...
>
> That's a curious one.  GPL says:
>
> "If ... conditions are imposed on you ... that contradict the conditions
> of this License, they do       not excuse you from the conditions of
> this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously
> your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations,
> then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all."
>
> This would appear to make it impossible, for example for a military
> contractor that 'distributes' its products to military customers to
> include GPL code in a weapons system that was under security
> restrictions, or for one country to license military technology
> that included GPL code to another country with any restrictions on
> to whom the weapons could be re-sold.  And is hurling a projectile
> that contains embedded software 'redistribution'?
>
>
> Al