Brian Frederick Kimball <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Making the GPL available in a separate file that may or may not be > received by the recipient of the GPLed Program does not constitute > "giving" the GPL to the recipients of such a program "along with the > Program". Is Debian giving the License along with the Program to > someone who runs wget http://http.us.debian.org/path/to/GPLed/deb on a > RedHat system? I don't think so.
Spurious argument. You are confusing "giving" with "taking". We "give" the entire world our distribution. What the user "takes" from us is a different matter. By your argument, we would have to include a copy of the GPL within every source file of a copy-lefted project, since someone might grab one file (or directory) out of the source tree and use it as part of a derived work. He only grabbed the one file (or directory) and therefore did not get a copy of the GPL. Nevertheless, the GPL was available in a separate file as part of the complete work. As it stands, the GPL does not define what comprises a work. It establishes no boundaries. Therefore, Debian can claim that the distribution (or at least the essential parts of it, without which the distribution will not work) *is* our work. One copy of the GPL will suffice. We have met the standard of the license, and have given the user a copy of the GPL as part of our work. - Brian
