GPL compliance

[Daniel Carrera]

On Thu, 2006-29-06 at 18:16 -0700, Gary W. Swearingen wrote:
> As I said:
> 
>    The hope is that all of these other owners have previously licensed
>    the software to everyone with some kind of general public license,
>    be it FSF GPL, BSD, MIT, X11, etc.

But when someone says that they choose a distribution which only uses
free software you decide to create a straw man and accuse them of saying
something ridiculous like "free software excludes me from IP law". If
the best you can do is create straw men, then you don't have any
position at all.

> > Right, therefore GNU/Linux
> > distributions don't exist.
> > Please take a look at /usr/share/doc/<package>/copyright for any piece
> > of software that is installed.
> 
> That's silly.  Take me seriously, please.

I think Mario is saying that your argument leads to a ridiculous
conclusion.

> > What are you talking about? Ubuntu main and AFAIK universe repositories
> > consist entirely of Free and Open Source software:
> > http://www.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/philosophy
> 
> I did not say they didn't

Yes you did. You said we were banking on the hope that the authors of
the code in the CD "have previously licensed the software to everyone
with some kind of general public license, be it FSF GPL, BSD, MIT, X11,
etc." We are not banking on a hope, we choose a distribution that uses
only free software.


> Redistributable software is redistributable only under the terms of
> their licenses.  The issue at hand is whether the OP can ignore,
> say, Red Hat's requirements, and simply satisfy Canonical's. 

Maybe you should read the GPL's redistribution requirements. They are in
section 3. Maybe you should become familiar with those before accusing
people of ignoring other people's requirements.

> >> To repeat for clarity: That license that covers the CD is only between
> >> you and Canonical and only applies to the IP owned by Canonical. 

Maybe you should look up "re-licensing" in a dictionary. The ability to
re-license is a cornerstone of free software.

> From 17 USC 103:
> 
>     The copyright in a compilation or derivative work extends only to
>     the material contributed by the author of such work, as
>     distinguished from the preexisting material employed in the work,
>     [...]

Thank you for demonstrating that it is you who doesn't understand
copyright law. You can't distinguish between owning the copyright to
something and having a copyright license that allows re-licensing. I
rest my case.

Daniel.
-- 
http://opendocumentfellowship.org
  "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the
  unreasonable man tries to adapt the world to himself.
  Therefore all progress depends on unreasonable men."
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