🚀 go-pugleaf

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.

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.



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.



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?