Re: Bug#317359: kde: ..3'rd "Help"->"About $KDE-app" tab calls the GPL "License Agreement", ie; a contract.
On Tue, Jul 12, 2005 at 08:31:37PM -0700, Sean Kellogg wrote:
> (1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;
>
> When you download something from the deb archives, you create a copy. That
> copy is not permitted under the copyright act unless you have permission from
> the owner. If that's not the way you read 106(1), then downloading
> copyrighted mp3s off napster was legal... and I suggest to you it was not.
The GPL's grants certainly aren't written in those terms:
"1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's
source code as you receive it ..."
"As you receive it" (as well as the attached conditions) makes this very
clear: it's granting permission to send the software to someone else, and
not talking about anyone's permission to receive it. If that permission
is also required, then nothing in the GPL grants it. In that case, everyone
who has downloaded GPL software has violated copyright, which means there's
a flaw in the license. There's just no clause that I can find that a person
downloading the software can be argued to have used in doing so.
--
Glenn Maynard
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