🚀 go-pugleaf

Richard Tobin wrote:

> Nonsense.  The requirement to provide source is a requirement on
> licencees, and the author is not a licencee.  Even for licencees, the
> requirement to provide source applies to those distributing it, and I
> challenge you to demonstrate that having someone break in to your
> computer counts legally as distribution.

Just because my argument is incorrect (based on a faulty assumption
that you must be licensed in order to use software) doesn't mean your
counter-argument is correct.

A right you give someone is an obligation /you/ take towards them.
So when a programmer places code under the GPL and thereby
grants people the right to source code, the author himself is bound
by the clauses of the GPL.

Now, *assuming* the GPL were required in order to /use/ software,
then even if someone stole the software from you, you would still
be bound to give them the source. The reason is because distribution
is distribution, whether knowing or unknowing, coerced or uncoerced,
deliberate or accidental. The counter-argument to this is to point
out that the nominal distributor gains an obligation (the GPL) from
someone /else's/ illegal actions. But *if* the GPL is required to even
use the software, then the nominal distributor doesn't gain any /new/
obligations; he must've had those obligations already just to be able
to use the software. And if he had the software on his computer
without using it then he was gratuitously running a risk of being
coerced into becoming a distributor and so he still helped in his
own downfall (ie, he implicitly accepted the obligations of the GPL
just by having the software on his computer for no apparent reason).

The reasoning is quite tight and quite valid, it's just based on an
incorrect assumption.