Re: Big blow to proprietary linking nonsense.

[Hyman Rosen]

On 5/17/2010 5:39 PM, amicus_curious wrote:
> Well, OK, so say that I post some link somewhere saying that you can get
> the Busy Box or whatever source from some place that has it. Now you
> have said many times that covers the waterfront for using and conveying
> the GPL program. So it is legitimately conveyed and subsequently it is
> legitimately modified by adding Rjack's proprietary piece to it to form
> the improved program. You cannot sue the customer and I don't see where
> you can sue the distributor since he has published the link to the
> source meeting the GPL requirement

Sorry, I can't figure out from your description above who the
actors are and what they are doing. The GPL requires that the
conveyor of a covered work provide the source code for the
version of the work being conveyed. The GPL permits changes to
be made without restriction or requirement to a copy of the
work which is not conveyed. Someone may add a non-free piece to
a GPLed work, but may then not convey the combined work. So if
a "customer" wishes to modify a GPLed work, he is allowed to do
so - indeed, I imagine there are any number of companies who
make in-house modifications to GPLed works and never convey
those works, and so never provide the source for their changes.

Remember, the purpose of the GPL is to provide freedom for users
of software. That's why users are permitted to do all of this
without restriction. But in order to provide freedom for all users,
once someone wants to convey a covered work, they must do so under
the terms of the GPL, so that the recipients can share in the same
freedom.

> > The recipient of the illegally conveyed program has no
> > right to further convey it, or to do anything else with
> > it - holders of illegal copies of a work don't get any
> > rights.
>
> Well, in my scenario that is just what Rjack would want, since the user
> is not allowed to further convey Rjack's additions either. It is pretty
> much like selling a program that uses some GPL program as a base but not
> putting the whole thing under the GPL. Who cares what the user does with
> the original GPL program, there isn't any commercial value in that. The
> key is being able to obtain the commercial value from the add-on that
> does something new.

As I said, the GPL requires that the someone who conveys a covered
work provide the source to the version being conveyed, so I don't
know what you mean by "selling a program that uses some GPL program
as a base but not putting the whole thing under the GPL". That is an
infringement of the copyright of the base program.