🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1993Jan7.202709.19083@husc3.harvard.edu> zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:
>>A copy of software released under the GPL maintains its original
>>copyright.  If you write something, and release it under the GPL, then
>>*that* *copy* is bound by the GPL.  But, as the copyright owner, you
>>are free to release other copies under other terms, as you see fit.
>You are contradicting yourself.  A copyright is a temporary, exclusive
>legal right, which entitles its owner to produce, publish, and sell
>copies of his original work.  As such, copyright attaches to the work,
>and not to any specific copy thereof.  The GPL expressly restricts all
>forms of copying, modification, sublicensing, distribution, or transfer
>of any code licensed under it, including, in virtue of its infamous
>"virus infection" provision, any program which contains GNU or its part,
>with or without modifications.  In other words, the GPL supersedes any
>residual rights of the copyright owner under its own terms.  It is
>ridiculous to suggest that only a particular copy of the work is so
>bound, for licensing, tike copyright, applies to the text type, rather
>than any of its instantiated tokens.

There's another question here: Suppose I write program A, with subroutine S in
it.  I also write program B, also with subroutine S in it.  I don't release B
at all, but either I put A under the GPL, or I release A into PD and someone
else puts A under the GPL.

Subroutine S is now in a GPL program.  Furthermore, subroutine S "infects"
other code; anything with a copy of S in it is _also_ under the GPL.

Now, I want to release B commercially.  But a rival company somehow manages to
find out that B contains S.  They then tell me "B has a subroutine in it
which was obviously taken from GPL program A.  Therefore, B is "infected" and
falls under the GPL, so I can legally copy program B."

But wait, I protest.  I didn't get S from a GPL program.  I already had S, in a
non-GPL version.  Unfortunately, the version of S which is GPL'ed is identical,
byte for byte, with the version of S which is not.  It's not even clear that
it's _meaningful_ to say that I used one version instead of the other.  So
I'm stuck.  The other company can pirate all they want.

Is this correct?  And if so, is this outcome FSF's intent?
--
"On the first day after Christmas my truelove served to me...  Leftover Turkey!
On the second day after Christmas my truelove served to me...  Turkey Casserole
    that she made from Leftover Turkey.
[days 3-4 deleted] ...  Flaming Turkey Wings! ...
   -- Pizza Hut commercial (and M*tlu/A*gic bait)

Ken Arromdee (arromdee@jyusenkyou.cs.jhu.edu, arromdee@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu)