Re: Artifex v. Diebold: "The GPL is non-commercial!"

[Hyman Rosen]

Alexander Terekhov wrote:
> Hyman Rosen wrote:
>> You can't make copies of GPLed code and convey those copies
>> to others unless you do so under the terms of the GPL.
> You're mistaken, Hyman. 17 USC 109.

17 USC 109 speaks about transferring legally obtained copies,
not about making copies, so your repeatedly invoking the section
in response to the above isn't meaningful.

> http://www2.verizon.net/micro/actiontec/actiontec.asp
> http://web-sniffer.net/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdownload.verizon.net%2Fwebdownload%2Ffirmware%2Fupgrades%2Factiontec%2520gateway%2F4.0.16.1.56.0.10.7-MI424WR.rmt&submit=Submit&http=1.1&gzip=yes&type=GET&uak=0

It is impossible to know, without having done detailed
discovery, what the Verizon web server is doing in response
to the "actiontec gateway" URL. Probing it from the outside
is meaningless because a web server internally can take
wildly different actions based on URL patterns. The requester
cannot know what these were. Whether the actions taken by the
Verizon server in this case constitute a GPL violation can be
determined only by investigation within Verizon. Since the
copyright holders appeared to be satisfied by Actiontec making
the sources available, it seems unlikely that we'll find out.

Naturally, as an opponent of the GPL, you would prefer that
Verizon be committing a GPL violation with impunity, but your
wishes are irrelevant to reality.