Re: Wallace's reply brief

[David Kastrup]

Alexander Terekhov <terekhov@web.de> writes:

> John Hasler wrote:
>> 
>> Ferd Burfel writes:
>> > Ah, so we finally hit upon your disagreement with the GPL: It doesn't
>> > allow people to take the work of others (that they obtained for no
>> > charge) and turn around and make a commerical product out of it.
>> 
>> Yes it does.  What it does not allow is a _closed source_ product.
>
> http://www.terekhov.de/Wallace-case-FAQ-for-dummies-v1.9.txt
>
> ------
> Q: The GPL allows charging fees for binaries, only source code must be
> available under the GPL at no charge. So what's the problem?
>
> A: You need to contact IBM's legal counsel and set them straight before
> they further embarrass themselves: "65. Among the "further restrictions"
> that the GPL and LGPL do not permit are royalties or licensing fees (Ex.
> 27 .. 2, 3; Ex. 26 .. 2, 4) (although fees can be collected for "the
> physical act of transferring a copy" of the code or for warranty
> protection). (Ex. 27 . 1; Ex. 26 . 1.) If modified works or machine-
> readable versions of GPL- or LGPL-licensed software are distributed,
> they must be licensed "at no charge to all third parties under the
> terms of this License." (Ex. 27 . 2 (emphasis added); Ex. 26 . 2; see
> also Ex. 27 . 3; Ex. 26 . 4.)" --- REDACTED MEMORANDUM IN SUPPORT OF
> IBM'S MOTION FOR PARTIAL SUMMARY JUDGMENT in SCO v. IBM (see Groklaw).
> ------

Yes, that is what "the physical act of transferring a copy" is all
about.  You can charge whatever you want for it.  You can't charge for
licensing this copy, however.  So you can't, for example, make
shareware where the copy is available to the customer, but the license
agreement only gets made by the transfer of a fee.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum