🚀 go-pugleaf

On 12 Oct 1998 10:02:02 +0100, Paul Rudin <paulr@shodan.demon.co.uk>
wrote:

>Decklin Foster <decklin@base.org> writes:
>
>> darrow@oneillaw.com (M O'Neill) writes:
>> 
>> > Klaus, you are confusing copyright with a license agreement.
>> > Copyright is according to law.  You can't change or define the terms
>> > of a copyright.
>> 
>> If I am not mistaken, the GPL works in exactly this way. First you
>> copyright something, then you add additional terms that allow you to
>> redistribute it.
>

that's correct.

>My undertanding is that you don't need to do anything in order to
>copyright something. You own the copyright to everything you write. I
>own the copyright to the words I write in this article and technically
>anyone reproducing them has infringed that copyright. You don't need
>to explicitly claim copyright in order for it to exist.
>
>
right and wrong.  You have a common law copyright in anything you
write AS LONG AS YOU DON'T PUBLISH IT.  Once you publish it (ie post
to usenet) you lose your rights unless you make some claim to keeping
them.  

>
>You can, if you choose, assign your rights; either freely or in return
>for payment. The GPL (I think) doesn't create or assign or waive the
>author's copyright. It specifies the terms and conditions under which
>copies of certain copyright material can be made and used.
>

correct.

>
>
>Incidentally, is there anything in the GPL that prevents you using
>GPL'd software to produce proprietary software? E.g. is there any
>licence violation if I use gcc to compile a program and then sell just
>the executable to someone? Presumably the words:
>
>    "The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from
>    the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on
>    the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program)."
>
>are intended to allow such activity? 
>

that's how I would read it.

>
>