On Thu, May 30, 2002 at 11:21:33PM +1000, Rick Welykochy wrote: > > That, and one of its products is probably already in breach of the > > GPL > > for similar reasons. Whee! > > Which brings up the question: who sues for breach of the GPL? > The copyright holder? > > The firrst such court battle will be interesting. I'm sure the > Evil Empire will be watching for such outcomes :-\
Yes, the copyright holder. However, to establish a breach of GPL, it must be proved that the GPL'ed code was /stolen/. The offender can very well claim that the code was developed by them and not part of the GPL'ed program. A copyright puts a stamp of ownership on any piece of work. However, if someone reads through your code, takes the logic involved and and puts it down into his own code, then he does *not* violate a copyright. Simply because he did not copy your work, he was just inspired by it. Unfortunately, with most copyleft holders being individuals they may not be able to fight the /Evil Empire/. And yes, the first such battle will be interesting! --mvm. -- Manoj Mathew (GPG: 1024D/4C2932EA) -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
