Re: The SFLC dismissals should be coming soon

[David Kastrup]

Hyman Rosen <hyrosen@mail.com> writes:

> On 2/16/2010 4:09 PM, RJack wrote:
>> Hyman: Uh your honor, I received permission from some unknown authors to
>> create this derivative work. It's a new work known under copyright law
>> as a derivative of a 'compilation of derivative works by unknown authors'.
>
> The work is licensed. There is no reason to disbelieve the license,
> when it is a well-known license used for a great deal of software.

Licenses are not a matter of belief.  License are a matter of commerce.
You get software from somewhere _under_ a certain license.  You don't
find software somewhere fallen off a truck, look inside, find a file
named "COPYING" and assume that the whole software must be licensed
under GPL.  To you.

The software could be some non-released software that the author decided
against releasing after all (or already), even though he already put
licensing files and headers into it.  That does not make the software
free for the taking if you manage to hack into his computer.  Or got the
software from somebody who did.  Or even if it _was_ distributed
properly and you have access to the computer of the person who acquired
it, you don't have the liberty to just make your own copy without
permission from the person in legal possession of the copy.

There are software users who pay quite a bit for GPLed software because
it is not easy to come by (for example, if it still needs to be
written).  Those users are then free to give you a licensed copy.  But
you are not free to take it from them without asking.

-- 
David Kastrup