Re: gnat-3.10

[David Kastrup <dak@mailhost.neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de>]

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Ronald Cole <ronald@ridgenet.net> writes:

> It's your choice to distribute your work under the GPL.  Once one
> chooses to distribute their work to person-A under the GPL, one
> should not be allowed to say "no" if person-B asks for a copy.


No, no, NOOO!  That way nobody will put anything under the GPL because
it would legally require him to set up a proper distribution service.
You can't demand that from freeware authors.

In fact, the GPL expressively frees the author of software from having
to hassle out the details of how to best distribute his software, and
leave that to others and in particular the market (it does not impose
any cost restrictions on this process).

This, of course, also means that if you're a lousy distributor (or
uploader), your software might not get anywhere worth noting.  But to
hold freeware authors responsible for their lack of resources or
management when they provide something for free is foolish.

Fortunately, the GPL does *not* demand that you're required to be a
proper distributor, *unless* you choose to make only binaries
available (in which case you are required to have the infrastructure
for providing the source).  If you don't distribute binaries without
source, you're complying to the GPL, regardless of how few people you
are distributing to.

The GPL serves just a few purposes: that no crippleware without source
gets effectively distributed (people should at least always get the
right to the source together with binaries), and that there are no
limits to redistribution other than that which would stop these
freedoms short.

I certainly would not want to have people go to the slammer because
they put something under the GPL and then their Internet connection
breaks down after they put out the announcement.


-- 
David Kastrup                                     Phone: +49-234-700-5570
Email: dak@neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de       Fax: +49-234-709-4209
Institut f�r Neuroinformatik, Universit�tsstr. 150, 44780 Bochum, Germany