Re: GPL traitor !

[Hyman Rosen]

David Kastrup wrote:
> As long as the program is separately useful without having the dynamic
> libraries available, and it is sold with the option of this separate
> usefulness.  If not, the linking is an inherent part of putting the
> program to its intended use, and thus falls under the responsibility of
> the program creator.

This is utter nonsense. You are making things up out of whole
cloth to conform to your wish of what copyright law might say.
But copyright law says no such thing.

Authors of computer programs gain copyright in their work as it
is written. Copyright of computer programs is in the text of the
program. Copyright law contains absolutely no concept of a program
being "useful". The copyright in a computer program does not change
based on what the program does when executed. Whether a program is
never executed at all or whether it is executed millions of times a
day does not at all affect the permissions required to copy and
distribute it.

> > You are simply wrong, and no amount of twisting and spinning is
> > going to change that. Programs which link dynamically to GPLed
> > libraries do not become bound by the GPL for that ability.
>
> Nothing becomes bound by the GPL.  You just have no other option to
> legally redistribute.

The dynamically linked program contains no copies of GPLed works
and therefore may be copied and distributed under permission of
the author of the work alone. Anything the GPL says is irrelevant
in this respect because there is no reason to apply the GPL to
the program, any more than there is reason to apply Microsoft's
licenses, or BSD's, or Apache's.