Gervase Markham wrote:
On 31/01/13 10:37, David Woolley wrote:
In the case of GPL one is it mainly meeting the minimum requirements for
establishing the copyright status of the file when used outside of the
original application. Such re-use is fundamental to the GPL concept,
even if many open source developers only think of their programs as ever
being used as a whole.
That's just not true. The entire _point_ of open source licenses is that
you can use the code without having to care who owns the copyright,
because the license under which they have released it gives you all the
rights you need.
Particularly with the GPL, many people don't really understand what they
are doing when they use it. They may not even have the right to grant
the licence. One case may be that is is actually work for hire.
Another real case is that someone used source code distributed under a
no-commercial use condition, for the G.729 codec, and distributed a
derivative work claiming that it was under the GPL.
Also, a statement of the copyright owner is normally part of the
condition for establishing copyright. It would certainly be very useful
if the terms of the licence had to be enforced. I think it is with
respect to enforcement, that the GPL makes this requirement.
Anyone who receives software for which they cannot establish the
copyright owner, should be very careful.
--
David Woolley
Emails are not formal business letters, whatever businesses may want.
RFC1855 says there should be an address here, but, in a world of spam,
that is no longer good advice, as archive address hiding may not work.
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