Re: The draft Position statement on the GFDL
> Raul Miller <moth@debian.org> writes:
>
> > On Tue, May 11, 2004 at 04:18:22PM -0400, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote:
> >> as the GFDL. The parenthetical is false. The GPL does not require
> >> that it be included in the distributed work, merely with the
> >> distributed work.
> >
> > I don't think this is a very meaningful distinction, for the context I
> > was discussing.
On Tue, May 11, 2004 at 07:36:04PM -0400, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote:
> The distinction is very important when discussing the freeness or
> non-freeness of the GFDL.
But this was the GPL, not the GFDL.
> > Given that the GPL applies only when a notice is contained in the
> > work,
>
> That is not true. For example, I have next to me a watercolor
> painting licensed under the GPL. The work itself does not contain a
> notice; rather, there is a tag next to it which gives its title,
> copyright information, and the fact that it is licenses to all those
> who receive a copy -- though not all viewers -- under the terms of the
> GNU GPL, version 2.
If the work doesn't contain a notice, the GPL doesn't say that it applies.
Of course for copyright purposes it might be reasonable to say that the
painting and the notice together are contained in the work.
> Similarly, I could hand you a book and tell you that I license to you
> all my rights in that book under the terms of the GPL, and the GPL
> would apply.
And if you lied?
Or changed your mind?
Or if I lied?
How could a judge know that I wasn't lying when I tell him you said it
was a GPLed work?
> > and given that you must keep that notice intact, ... well you still have
> > the notice (or notices), which you must leave intact, that's still --
> > in the fully general sense that some people seem to want to use --
> > a restriction on modifications to the work.
>
> You are incorrect due to overgeneralization. You must leave a notice
> iff there was a notice. But, for a start, that is only a mark on the
> source code. It need not impact the compiled program at all. That
> is, it must be visible to one inspecting the program, but not to one
> using the program. You must also leave the notice on an interactive
> program intact, but that is also a much weaker limitation -- it does
> not apply to noninteractive programs, for example.
Are you trying to argue that a GPLed binary is a work independent from
the sources it's built from?
--
Raul
Reply to: