> > > So please don't suggest any more that people are trying to evade > > > copyright law when in fact they are trying (maybe by jumping through > > > hoops) to abide by the conditions put forth in the licence(s). > > > > Are you now claiming that it's legal to distribute kghostscript?
On Mon, Feb 14, 2000 at 03:21:44PM +0100, Marc van Leeuwen wrote: > Yes, definitely, if you are distributing sources; from your remarks I conclude > that even you would agree to this. One could include scripts to compile and > link (say statically, just to get the worst case) those sources onto a > complete executable; since all the tools necessary to do that could also be > (and are in fact) legally distributed by the same distributor, the effect is > that this executable will be identical, bit by bit, to an executable that the > distributor could assemble. So the exact same effect is achieved, although > slightly less efficiently, as if the distributor had directly distributed that > executable file. But, we agree, the latter would certainly not be permitted. If the exact same affect is achieved -- if no user intervention is required -- then there's no legal protection gained by automatically building the executables for the customer on their machine. You'd still be distributing executables, you'd just be using a different technology to deliver them. > Probably your question was about another method of distribution > than in source form. But instead of diving for the umpteenth time > into matters about which we (and many others) have already amply > demonstrated to have differences of opinion, let me just restate that > on which we do seem to agree. If our goal is to give users access > to an executable version of kghostscript, then there is a reliable > method of doing that (distributing sources) that satisfies all the > requirements in the relevant licences, while there is another method > (distributing the statically linked executable file directly) that > does not satisfy all requirements, in particular not those of the GPL. > We arrived at this conclusion not by trying to evade copyright law, > but merely by reading carefully the conditions of the GPL. There's a difference between simply distributing GPLed sources and distributing the sources as a part of a system which automatically builds working executables. In the latter case it's pretty obvious that you are distributing executables. But I will grant that this is not a technique which linux distributors are currently using to distribute kde executables. > Now apart from distributing sources and distributing a statically linked > executable, there are other methods to give users access to an executable, > varying in the amount of work do be done at the recipients end. Offhand I can > think of distributing compiled but unlinked object files, or distributing > dynamically linked object files; maybe other possibilities exist as well. Please take a look at http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-legal-0002/msg00211.html for a historical example of shipping unlinked object files. -- Raul
