Quoting Bruce Perens ([email protected]): > I did publish a warning about Grsecurity, here > <http://perens.com/blog/2017/06/28/warning-grsecurity-potential-contributory-infringement-risk-for-customers/?wp-nocache=true> > .
Well, it's interesting. I notice you just summarily declare that the patchsets cannot be fair use, without even mentioning the applicable four-factor conceptual test framework -- your right, of course, if you don't care to get into messy details. But that's something an alert reader will pick up on, and immediately wonder about. The key bit is your sentence 'GPL version 2 section 6 explicitly prohibits the addition of terms such as this redistribution prohibition', which does not accord with my own understanding of that clause or of pragmatic copyright caselaw -- as I've said. Here's a (separate but tangentially related) interesting hypothetical: Imagine a commercial firm distributing derivative works of third-party GPLv2 codebases only to paid customers who're paying for updates and support. One day, a customer who happens to have been one of, let's say, three customers who've been redistributing those works receives a letter saying that in accordance with contract terms that permit either party to do so, the commercial firm is ending the business relationship prospectively. No allegation is made that the one action was in response to the other. Customer does not have a cause of action under copyright, but let's say the third-party stakeholder brings tort action against commercial firm for copyright violation (i.e., substantively denying a redistributor of a derivative work a required permission). Who prevails? Stakeholder claims that without granting right of distribution, commercial firm lacked copyright permission for -its- redistribution to paying customers, hence is in violation. Commercial firm counters that, to the contrary, it's done nothing to prevent customer from exercising that right, and merely was ending a business relationship as was its right. The only difference between this and the Spengler et alii matter is that, in the latter case -- according to you -- customers were told this was a 'penalty' and a 'threat'. Whose wording was that, by the way, Spengler's or yours? _______________________________________________ Dng mailing list [email protected] https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
