From: jfc@athena.mit.edu (John F Carr) Subject: Re: What would people think of binary-only software on Linux? Date: 28 Feb 1993 17:53:48 GMT
In article <1993Feb28.164606.12123@leland.Stanford.EDU>
bir7@leland.Stanford.EDU (Ross Biro) writes:
> The GPL has never been tested in a court of law, so legally it
>is an unknown. I do know the intent of the GPL is to include object
>modules whose primary purpose is to be linked into a GPL'ed package.
Authors of GPL software can claim that intent, and I'm sure RMS would
appreciate it if people acted that way, but there is no way that my
software, not derived from other copyrighted source, can be held to the
terms of the GPL, the legal authority of which derives from copyright.
>Otherwise I could make any GPL software proprietary by adding a .o file
>[...] I could then limit redistribution of a GPL covered binary, and the
>GPL would effectively be useless.
1. There's no law preventing the FSF from distrubiting their software under
an ineffective license. Since they are using a shrink-wrap license, I don't
think they can get very far by claiming they meant to say something else.
In a normal contract dispute a court will give consideration to mutual
intent, but there is no mutual intent here -- the parties never
communicated.
2. You could limit distribution of your modified binary, but what's wrong
with that? Copyright law allows people to create works that they can not
redistribute. Here's a flawed analogy: suppose I don't like the ending of
the latest Tom Clancy novel. I'm free to write my own ending, but I can't
give it away. The flaw in the analogy is that my ending is a derivative
work, so Clancy has some copyright interest in it too. My O(N) quick sort
function might be linked with gcc, but is not a derivative work.
The interesting legal question here is: when does redistribution covered by
the GPL start? My guess is that redistribution within an institution is not
covered by the GPL, but not beyond. Then you have another problem: in a
networked computer system, it's hard to say what should be called "copying",
and who did the copying.
3. Quoting the GPL:
These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If
identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program,
and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in
themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those
sections when you distribute them as separate works.
I interpret this to mean that my proprietary.o is a separate work, but the 5
lines of code I added to GPL-file.c do not allow me to distribute GPL-file.o
alone.
Note that I have cross-posted to gnu.misc.discuss. If you follow up with a
message that is not appropriate to both comp.os.linux and gnu.misc.discuss,
edit the header.