Xref: utzoo alt.religion.computers:1361 gnu.misc.discuss:734 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!apple!bionet!ig!mcb From: mcb@presto.IG.COM (Michael C. Berch) Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,gnu.misc.discuss Subject: Re: Disinfecting the GNU Public Virus...er...License Message-ID: Date: 17 Jan 90 22:26:48 GMT References: <4&VSZ:@splut.conmicro.com> <13707@s.ms.uky.edu> <20859@stealth.acf.nyu.edu> Followup-To: alt.religion.computers Organization: IntelliGenetics, Inc., Mountain View, Calif. USA Lines: 47 In the referenced article, brnstnd@stealth.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes: > In article <13707@s.ms.uky.edu> sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey) writes: > > In article <4&VSZ:@splut.conmicro.com> jay@splut.conmicro.com > > (Jay Maynard) writes: > > | Ignorance of the law is no excuse, so the user of the code is still > > | covered by the terms of the GNU Public License. Presto! Without knowing > > | it, he's just obligated himself to giving away the source code to > > | WhizzoCalc, and prevented himself from keeping others from giving it > > | away, forever. > > Actually that's not the way the law handles such cases. > > Correct. Ignorance of the law is never an excuse, but ignorance of the > situation can be. That's why everybody should know and apply the legal > principle of Making It Clear To The Other Guy. Even if the court ruled > that the GPL were valid, the user would not be bound by the terms of the > license, since he was never informed of them. (That's another reason that > limited copyrights are so superior to licenses: someone who isn't informed > of the limitations is still bound by the copyright.) I'm not sure I understand the last remark in the above material. Specifically, I have never heard the term "limited copyright" used in copyright jurisprudence. Either a work is copyrighted or it's not; there is no middle ground. But if by this you mean the statements of limitation of copying, retransmission, etc., that often accompany notice of copyright, those *are* licenses. In copyright usage, a "license" does not imply a contract; it is merely a grant of property rights by the copyright holder. It *can* be integrated into a contract which contains provisions other than the grant of rights, such as consideration by the licensee, remedies, etc., but it need not be. As for the example above, even persons who have no actual or constructive notice of the copyright are still bound by it; they are, however, so-called "innocent infringers" and are generally not subject to damage awards for infringement, but certainly are subject to injunctions against further infringement. It would seem to me, however, that a person who distributes computer object code containing run-time versions of subroutine libraries is under a duty to examine the resulting binaries for notice of copyright before redistributing the code. Presumably the GNU run-time code would have FSF copyright notices propagated into the object code (this is trivial via SCCS or RCS, etc.); therefore whomever redistributed this would have, in my opinion, at least constructive notice of the FSF copyright, and would no longer be an innocent infringer. -- Michael C. Berch mcb@presto.ig.com / uunet!presto.ig.com!mcb / ames!bionet!mcb