🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <5889@tank.uchicago.edu>, matt@oddjob (Matt Crawford) writes:
>One sticking point preventing them from using GNU software is the
>meaning of the word "distribute" in the license.  If they provided the
>hypothetical GNU-derivative code to an employee to use or to maintain,
>would the employee have the right to redistribute it further?  If they
>copied the to another office of the same company, would they have
>distributed it?

This doesn't seem as difficult an issue as you're making it.  If some
employee of the company gave a copy of the software to another office of
the same company, then she is "distributing" that software, as the GPL
uses the term.  The receiver of the software can then request a copy of
the source code if he so desires.  Any company that denies its employees
access to source code of internally developed and maintained software is
asking for trouble.

As to whether an employee has the right to redistribute the software
further, all anyone who wishes to redistribute GNU-derived software has
to ask herself is whether she is willing to provide machine-readable
source code to the receivers of the software.

>What is RMS's intention in the case of software intended to be used
>privately in the conduct of a non-software business?

I obviously can't speak for RMS, but I would only have three words as to
how software should be used:  Share, share, share!

--woodstock
-- 
	   "What I like is when you're looking and thinking and looking
	   and thinking...and suddenly you wake up."   - Hobbes

woodstock@hobbes.intel.com   ...!{decwrl|hplabs!oliveb}!intelca!mipos3!nate