Re: Another GNU License Question

[David Kastrup]

mike3 <mike4ty4@yahoo.com> writes:

> On Aug 12, 3:15 am, David Kastrup <d...@gnu.org> wrote:
>
>> No.  It is directed at you.  If the guy redistributes your program,
>> you can sue him for misappropriation, not for breach of license,
>> because the programmer got no license in the first place.
>
> It is directed at him in the sense that he'd be the one who'd be
> getting the "penalty" (ie. the suit mentioned above.).

But that has nothing to do with the GPL.  No license, no rights.  It
does not matter whether "no license" is "no GPL" or "no EULA".
Nothing is nothing.

>> > But does the terms under the GPL mean that _you_ cannot go and
>> > grant the hired guy permission to distribute your program even if
>> > for some odd reason you wanted to?
>>
>> He does not get a license in the course of the described business
>> transaction, but nothing precludes you from giving him one
>> explicitly, _if_ you have a license to do so.
>
> Ie., if you owned all the program, for example. But why doesn't this
> hired guy automatically get license to distribute your "free"
> software?
>
> Is it because the "free" software might not be completed?

You are laboring under the delusion that the license is something
which somehow contaminates and infects the software.  This is not so.
The license is a grant of rights to the software.  This grant of
rights can be different for any transfer of a copy to a recipient.

Some software might have been transfered to you under conditions.  It
is this transfer that binds you, not something inside the software
itself.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum