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=-0.5 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID, PP_MIME_FAKE_ASCII_TEXT autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII X-Google-Thread: 1025b4,499ea588f6acabff X-Google-Attributes: gid1025b4,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,1efdd369be089610 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: David Kastrup Subject: Re: gnat-3.10 Date: 1997/06/30 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 253584830 References: <1997Jun23.102715.1@eisner> Organization: Institut fuer Neuroinformatik, Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum, Germany Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,gnu.misc.discuss Date: 1997-06-30T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Ronald Cole 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