Re: GPL question

[David Kastrup]

me@davecotter.com writes:

>> Then you are not copying or distributing foo and so its license
>> does not impinge upon you.
>
> Well, doesn't this just seem like a total legal loophole in the GPL?
> What if i don't even ask the user to press a button, what if i just,
> upon install, as part of the install, just download and install the
> "foo" in the background?  From the user's perspective, it *seems*
> built in, and from my perspective, it's just a technical difference,
> either "foo" comes with the initial download or it comes when the
> user first invokes it's function (which triggers the
> download-install of "foo")?  Is invoking a download and auto-install
> technically the same as "distributing"?  and if not, it's a rather
> gaping hole in the whole licensing scheme.  basically as long as
> "foo" can be invoked via command line or is otherwise scriptable,
> you can totally blow off the GPL and treat it like LGPL??

You'll find that judges are no mechanical idiots.  If you plant a bomb
in someone's house, the person triggering it by falling over the
tripwire will not be the one convicted of murder.

If you drop a rock on someone's head, gravity is not going to be
incarcerated for not letting it float.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum