Re: [OT] Droit d'auteur vs. free software? (Was: query from Georg Greve of GNU about Debian's opinion of the FDL
On Thu, May 01, 2003 at 11:11:41AM -0700, Mark Rafn wrote:
> Under droit d'auteur, you're not allowed to grant unqualified permission
> to the reciever of a work to make modifications or to distribute the work.
> You cannot fulfil the GPL requirements, so you cannot distribute the work.
You appear to be confusing things. The GPL places no restriction on the
original author, so the original author may obviously distribute their
own work. As a redistributor of a GPL'ed work, you are not involved in the
granting of rights in any way -- the rights are automatically granted by
the original author to a recipient at the point when the recipient receives.
The problem would only arise in a situation where you were the author of a
work which used a GPL'ed library and were in a position where you were
forbidden to license your work under the GPL. I don't see anything to that
effect here, merely that some portions of it may not be enforcible by
recipients who wish to redistribute if at some later point you decide that
your previous work now offends your newfound delicate moral sensibilities.
And that only if that element of the Droits d'Auteur were applied to software
(or if your work were not deemed to be software, but rather something more
"artistic" instead... what the f*** were the guys who thought this up smoking?)
Cheers,
Nick
--
Nick Phillips -- nwp@lemon-computing.com
You will be Told about it Tomorrow. Go Home and Prepare Thyself.
Reply to: