Re: Distributing GPL software.
On Fri, 13 Jan 2006, Mahesh T. Pai wrote:
> > And I'm still not in prison. How come?
>
> 1. You have some kind of understanding with the copyright holder of
> the program in question.
>
> 2. You have not been prosecuted != you have not broken the law.
I think his point is this: Person A can legally make and distribute a lot of
copies to B without putting B under any obligation, as long as B doesn't
make more copies himself. B, who now has a lot of copies, can dispose of them
as he wishes by first sale, without having to obey the GPL.
The argument "what if it was Windows XP instead of GPL software" doesn't seem
to work here. The first step would become "Person A can legally make and
distribute a lot of copies of Windows XP to B..." This statement would be
true for GPL software and false for Windows XP, so the argument wouldn't
extend to Windows XP. Only licenses that contain the specific quirks of
the GPL would have this loophole.
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