Re: Discussion about licenses, copyrights, business, and source code

[Benjamin Franksen <benjamin.franksen@helmholtz-berlin.de>]

On Thursday 30 October 2014 12:36:55 Andrew Johnson wrote:
> On 10/30/2014 11:58 AM, Benjamin Franksen wrote:
> > On the other hand, think about systems in which there are no
> > "programs" in usual sense, just subroutines (e.g. VxWorks, RTEMS):
> > using a GPL'ed subroutine together with another non-free subroutine
> > inside the same system would then be forbidden because one has to
> > regard the whole thing as one big program and thus a "derived
> > work". So have we already been violating the GPL all the time or
> > what?
>
> No, because we never try to distribute the resulting combined
> programs, and it's only the right of distribution (i.e. giving a copy
> of a GPL program to someone else) that is subject to the laws of
> copyright. You already stated the FSF's position that the GPL allows
> any *use* of a GPL program without restriction, it has no legal teeth
> to prevent that anyway.

Hi Andrew

Good point and thanks for the clarification.

Cheers
Ben
--
"Make it so they have to reboot after every typo." ― Scott Adams


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