Re: scope of linux in the corporates...


Please just reconcile this one quote:

"The license does not require anyone to accept it in order to
acquire, install, use, inspect, or even experimentally modify
GPL'd software."
Eben Moglen

With this excerpt from the GPL:

"5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not
signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or
distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are
prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by
modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the
Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and
all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying
the Program or works based on it."

Moglen says you can modify GPL'd software without accepting the GPL.
The GPL says that modifying is prohibited by law if you do not accept
the GPL.

Eben Moglen, in all of those quotes, is giving informal, imprecise
summary information. You cannot derive legal conclusions about edge
cases from what he's saying.

The terms "copying" and "distributing" have precise legal meanings that
determine what you do and don't need the copyright holder's permission
to do, and hence when you have to agree with the terms.

You are using them by their common English meanings and assuming from
that that you can tell when the GPL does and doesn't apply. You just
can't do that.

You must accompany every copy with source code (or an offer for it) --
always. That's the gist of what the GPL says. You must accept the GPL
to create a derivative work in the first place (assuming that doing so
is not fair use), no matter what Eben Moglen says.

DS

.

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