Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 06:01:15 +0930 From: Greg Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.org> To: j mckitrick <jcm@FreeBSD-uk.eu.org> Cc: David O'Brien <freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org>, Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com>, Dirk Myers <dirkm@teleport.com> Subject: Re: BSD, .Net comments - any reponse to this reasoning? Message-ID: <20010710060114.Q80862@wantadilla.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <20010709164857.B42753@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org>; from jcm@FreeBSD-uk.eu.org on Mon, Jul 09, 2001 at 04:48:57PM %2B0100 References: <20010630174743.A85268@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> <20010630173455.T344@teleport.com> <20010701032900.A93049@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> <20010701132353.W344@teleport.com> <20010702152649.A18127@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> <3B449C54.EC88E204@softweyr.com> <20010705184811.A78227@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> <20010709011028.A2736@hub.freebsd.org> <20010709164857.B42753@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Monday, 9 July 2001 at 16:48:57 +0100, j mckitrick wrote: > On Mon, Jul 09, 2001 at 01:10:28AM -0700, David O'Brien wrote: >> On Thu, Jul 05, 2001 at 06:48:11PM +0100, j mckitrick wrote: >>> I thing my word choice obscured my intent: >>> >>> The FSF holds the copyright to insure that the PROJECT will remain forever >>> GPL'ed. >> >> NO. The FSF holds the copyright to insure it is *defendable*. If GCC, >> et. al. was not fully owned by them it would be quite hard to sue someone >> over abuse of copyright or license. Same reason UC-Berkeley/CSFG did the >> same for BSD. > > Hmmm. Well, that does make sense, though I find it hard to believe that a > great deal of GPL code couldn't be easily 'stolen' in the sense of using it > and not giving back. Of course. I'm sure it happens all the time. I once had to sign an NDA to see the source code of a compiler which proved to be gcc. > If it isn't GUI code (in some cases even *that* could be explained > away) and if it doesn't produce identical output, I find it hard to > believe anyone could *prove* in a court of law that binary A > includes source B, which is GPL protected. Given the understanding of the legal profession, I consider it more likely that the court would require defendant to produce the source code. That would be a lot more obvious. Greg -- See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20010710060114.Q80862>