John Galt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > First of all, knowledge is not that of the actors, but of the "reasonable > man". The .deb archive standard contents were decided on when Debian was > still a FSF project, and they certainly haven't been modified to remove > the license after the separation. Thus the decision to not have the GPL > within the .deb archive was made with the participation of the FSF. If > RMS didn't know, it was because he was not a "reasonable man", and not > because he had no means of knowing.
Debian was not materially an FSF project; RMS payed Ian for a very brief period of time. Nor in this case is it a "reasonable man" standard, because it's not negligence that is going on, but estoppel. It's actual knowledge, because the question is actual implied permission. A copyright owner, to preserve all their rights, must assiduously enforce copyright violations they are aware of; there is no requirement that they enforce violations they do not know about. Thomas
