🚀 go-pugleaf

    Date: 1 May 90 02:51:50 GMT
    From: williamt@athena1.Eng.Sun.COM (William A. Turnbow)

    In article <GUMBY.90Apr29041714@Cygnus.COM> gumby@Cygnus.COM (David Vinayak Wallace) writes:
    >I can't understand what all this ``unwilling'' and ``unknowing''
    >business is about.  You can't modify the source code without seeing a
    >copyright notice which either includes or points you at the license
    >terms.  And if you modify sources without reading them well, you have
    >more problems than just worrying about selling the code.
    >
    >Seems to me that once you've been informed of the licensing
    >conditions, if you go ahead you implicitly agree to them.

    Perhaps if you work with the source code, maybe, but suppose you
    are an end user of g++ and link with the standard stream libraries.

I already answered this:
1> If you link with the gnu stream library in a way indistinguishable
   from the standard stream library there is no effect.
2> If you use some libG++-specific feature you must have read the
   documentation or header file to figure out how to use it, and hence
   been pointed at the conditions.

    An end user of this compiler/library can NEVER look at source
    code or the agreement.
    Are you saying he is covered too?

Huh?  Sure.  The license says clearly in section 3 that when you
distribute a derivative work or the work itself that you must offer or
distribute the sources to that the recipient may redistribute too at
his/her option.

Also most GNU programs have to start up with an annoying blurb which
explains your rights.

    Even someone who installs the g++ from scratch may only type
    make and copy the resultant files off somewhere -- he also may
    never read the GNU license agreement.

It never works this well.  But I discovered that the G++ installation
instructions only indirectly point to the copyleft -- but that is
fixed in the next release.

    Using source is one thing, but using the binary libraries it seems
    is something else entirely.

It's hardly only the FSF who licenses binary libraries.  That's de
rigeur, except in certain parts of the unix and PC world.  What's
unusual is that the FSF requires source distribution too.  

Free software is truly open software!  Most vendors use the phrase
just to obscure the nature their proprietary work.  How can software
consumers put up with this?