Re: Mgetty should be in non-free?
Brian Ristuccia <brianr@osiris.978.org> writes:
> The license saying "don't make profit directly out of selling mgetty" has no
> bearing on the right the license already granted to distribute mgetty, since
> you don't have the right to sell mgetty itself in the first place.
> Don't say "but the user should know that he means make profit from selling a
> _copy_ of mgetty". If you're an author, you'll find out very painfully the
> difference between selling your book and selling a copy of your book,
> especially if a publisher is out to rip you off. If the author meant copy,
> he should have said copy.
If you really want to nitpick in that detail, please observe that the
software itself cannot be owned hence not sold. The MEDIUM on which
the software sits can be owned, and the INTELLECTUAL RIGHTS associated
with the software can be owned, but not the software itself.
Then the author speaks about "selling mgetty" he could either mean
1. "selling the intellectual rights to mgetty" - which is clearly
ridiculous because the author himself is the only one who can
logically sell them, so he would'nt speak about the sale in
the second person.
2. "selling a copy of mgetty" - which makes perfect sense.
I don't think you get anywhere by insisting that the least meaningful
sense is what is meant. It certainly won't impress the judge when/if
the mgetty author sues someone who sells faxmodems with mgetty copies.
--
Henning Makholm
http://www.diku.dk/students/makholm
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