🚀 go-pugleaf

>>>>> "Jeffrey" == Jeffrey B Siegal <jbs@quiotix.com> writes:

    RMS> but transfer outside the company is distribution.

    Jeffrey> I've heard this interpretatin before but frankly I don't
    Jeffrey> see the basis for it.  Such copies certainly are copies
    Jeffrey> under copyright law, which requires permission of the
    Jeffrey> copyright holder.  Otherwise, as you suggest elsewhere,
    Jeffrey> BSA could not take action against comapnies that copy
    Jeffrey> software "but only within the company."  And see the
    Jeffrey> Texaco case, which had to do with journal articles being
    Jeffrey> copied and distributed within a company.  This
    Jeffrey> inside/outside distinction sounds like nonsense to me.

The inside/outside distinction is merely a guideline to follow for
when one is going against the GPL.  Look at it this way: nowhere in
the GPL is "distribution" defined.  Why?  Because you should be able
to modifiy a small portion of the code to suit your liking, on your
own computer, without having to go to the trouble of publishing your
changes and making them available.  You should probably also be able
to give your friend binaries of your modified source, but the farther
one distributes changes without source, the more one is going against
the spirit of the GPL.

    Jeffrey> Now, in the case of GCC, all work has been assigned to
    Jeffrey> FSF, so if RMS says that copying within a company is
    Jeffrey> allowed without GPL obligations fine, but what about the
    Jeffrey> Linux kernel, for example, which does not require
    Jeffrey> assignment.  What right does a company have to violate
    Jeffrey> each contributor's copyright by non-compliant "internal"
    Jeffrey> copying?

None.  I would say that if modified software has spread throughout a
company, every worker in that company, as well as everyone outside
that company, has been guaranteed that the software will be free, and
not distributing the company's changes violates that freedom.  One
could say that it hasn't crossed the "internal" to "external" line,
but I would say that it has.  One of those areas of legal fuziness.

-- 
Colin Walters <levanti@verbum.org>
http://web.verbum.org/levanti
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