Re: GPL and other licences

[David Kastrup]

"Alfred M\. Szmidt" <ams@gnu.org> writes:

>    I meant to write exactly what I did.  Somebody who admits to being
>    incapable of grasping the concept of "internal use" should not go
>    reinterpreting the words of someone else.
>
> Can you please stop your condesending tone?  It will make for a more
> pleasent discussion.
>
>    > If the license isn't relevant to me, then the whole discussion is
>    > quite pointless. :-)
>
>    Wrong.  The whole point of "internal use" is that the license is
>    not relevant to a company employee.
>
> I cannot take a non-free program (legally), install it on all internal
> machines, and then pretend that I do not have to abide by the license.
> I am still bound by copyright law.  It doesn't matter if it is
> internal use or not.

You just don't get it.  You can't do _anything_, period, with company
property without company permission.  You are not the owner.  The
license does not apply to you.  Neither does copyright.  Your rights
are restricted to what the company allows you to do with its property.
The physical copy of the software that the company acquired is its
property.  Having to work with that copy does not make you the owner
of it, so you are not allowed to access its contents other than
directed.  In a similar way, driving a company car does not make you
the owner of the car, and you are not free to drive it into a drive-in
movies unless you get special permission.

Even though every car owner has permission to drive into drive-in
movies.

>    > The license obviously does apply to me.  Otherwise one could simple
>    > do what the heck one wants.
>
>    Oh sure.  Like you can just take a car and drive it away when its
>    purchase contract does not apply to you.
>
> Why are you comming up with such silly examples? A car is not
> software, copyright laws do not apply to property.

Copyright law applies to tangible, physical copies.

> Please, stop it David, you are far to intelligent to troll like
> Alexander.
>
>    > Since I legally aquired the content,
>
>    Look up "acquire" in a dictionary of law.  You did no such thing if
>    the software is work material of your company.  You don't acquire a
>    company car, and you don't acquire company software.
>
> Stop confusing physical objects with non-physical objects.  You gave
> me as an employee of your company a CD, legally, to me,

A CD is a physical object.

> I can take the content of the CD and redistribute it _IF_ the
> license of the software allows me to.

Wrong.  Only the licensee of the software is allowed to make use of
the license.

You are not the licensee of the software in this situation.  The
company is.

> Please, David, I'm all for discussing things, but you are going down
> the spiral of Alexander with your totally irrelevant comments,
> comparisons that have nothing to do with the disucssion at hand, and
> these silly accusations.

And you don't understand the difference between software and software
media, and don't understand "internal use".

You are either not willing or incapable of understanding the issues at
hand.  I will point out when you tell falsehoods to posters on this
list and revert them to the GPL FAQ from the FSF for more details, but
I will not further "discuss" this with you since you show absolutely
no inclination to even consider anything apart from your predetermined
views that are in flat contradiction to how the law operates, and
consequently also to what the FSF states.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum