Matthew Palmer wrote: > I have recently come to believe that the GPL's requirement for source > distribution is fundamentally different, and is in fact not truly a > "compelled distribution" in the fashion of the QPL. Please rip my thought > process to shreds if it's bogus. > > The core of my argument is that the binary and source forms of a work are in > fact different forms of the same copyrighted work (excluding, for the > purposes of thought-experiment, the linking issue). Since both forms are > the same copyrighted work, there is no real separation of entities to > distribute -- the GPL is just making that nice and clear. Consider, as an > analogous situation, that some books come with CDs of the text of the book > and (sometimes) further examples and other material. The printed text and > the book-on-CD are the same copyrighted work. If you sell the book to > someone else, you're supposed to give them the CD as well. Certainly it's > frowned upon to sell the book to one person and the CD to someone else. > > The GPL is just source+binary in the same way as book+CD. Some licences > give you the option of distributing in one form or the other, but the GPL > reserves this right to some degree -- it says that you at least have to give > the recipient the option -- it's like asking the person you sell your book > to if they want the CD, and if they decline, you throw it in the bin. > > The argument seems fairly OK to me. Any comments? It certainly sounds reasonable, but I don't know to what extent it is legally grounded. - Josh Triplett
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