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 autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 1025b4,1d8ab55e71d08f3d X-Google-Attributes: gid1025b4,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,1efdd369be089610 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Ronald Cole Subject: Re: what DOES the GPL really say? Date: 1997/08/29 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 269003894 References: <5tg9or$msl$1@news.nyu.edu> <5tujkj$qr9$1@news.nyu.edu> Organization: RidgeNet - SLIP/PPP Internet, Ridgecrest, CA. (760) 371-3501 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,gnu.misc.discuss Date: 1997-08-29T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: kenner@lab.ultra.nyu.edu (Richard Kenner) writes: > In article Ronald Cole writes: > >Oh, bullshit, Richard... The GPL plainly says "To protect your > >rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you > >these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights." > > > >It seems clear that "discouraging free distribution" is equivalent > >in effect to asking you to surrender the right to distribute. > > That's correct, though I'd use the word "waive" rather than > "surrender". Dewar posted that he feels that he is within the "letter *and the spirit*" of the GPL when he *asks* his "wavefront" customers not to redistribute that which he distributes. I, however, feel that by doing so, he has violated the "spirit" of the GPL (since the quoted clause is found in the preamble and doesn't appear to be present in the enumerated sections). > But the key point that this is *asking*, not *requiring*. Still, the GPL says "To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to ... *ask* you to surrender the rights" and then fails to actually enumerate such a restriction (a loophole which apparently both Stallman and Dewar use to discourage "runaway snapshots"). Are we in agreement then (that the GPL needs to be made more consistent; if not with the Manifesto, then at least with itself)? On another subject, Dewar once stated that he had asked Stallman about basing a public release of GNAT on one of the gcc snapshots, and the resulting reaction was what swore him off of allowing wide distribution of "wavefront" releases. Now that the egcs project has reared it's (ugly? we'll wait and see) head, should Dewar consider basing the next public release of GNAT upon an egcs snapshot? (It really would be nice to be able to build gcc, g++, f77, and GNAT from a unified source tree without having to apply two differing patch files and hoping for the best...) -- Forte International, P.O. Box 1412, Ridgecrest, CA 93556-1412 Ronald Cole Phone: (760) 499-9142 President, CEO Fax: (760) 499-9152 My PGP fingerprint: E9 A8 E3 68 61 88 EF 43 56 2B CE 3E E9 8F 3F 2B