Re: Q: Combining proprietary code and GPL for in-house use

[Henning Makholm <henning@makholm.net>]

Scripsit Raul Miller <moth@debian.org>
> On Wed, Jun 20, 2001 at 10:04:23PM +0200, Henning Makholm wrote:

> > Oh. In that case I would suppose that "contributory infringement"
> > logically requires that somebody actually infringes on the copyright.
> > Who would that be in this case?

> The idea is that if lots of people engage in minor copyright violations

I don't see any minor or major copyright violations in this scenario:

  1) F produces a library L and releases it under the GPL
  2) A produces a program P that links to L.
  3) A distributes the source code for P (but not for L) til B
  4) B gets L from F and compiles and uses P.

As far as I understand you RMS's claim would be that A is somehow
violating the GPL even though he never copies the library it applies
to. I cannot see how "contributory infringement" applies here, because
nobody in the story copies anything they are not explicitly allowed to
copy. In fact, nobody copies anything they didn't write themselves!
  
-- 
Henning Makholm                                           "Check the sprog."