-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 05/25/08 14:41, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso wrote: > On 24/05/2008, Douglas A. Tutty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> > Setting that aside, you bring up an interesting point. If I take GPLed >> > code, I modify it internally, and somehow it leaks outside, is the >> > person who takes it infringing copyright or not? I say they're not, >> > since the code isn't copyrighted to me even if I modified it. On the >> > other hand, they can't force me to distribute the source either, since >> > I didn't convey the code, right? It just got leaked somehow. >> > >> > Curious hypothetical situation. >> >> The person who "leaked" it is the one doing the distribution or >> "conveying". > > So the person who leaks the modified GPL code is the one who has to > make sure the source is also available? That's.... weird. :-) > >> They are guilty of misappropriating your code and of >> violating the license agreement. > > Are they violating the GPL by distributing the code? The only way that > the GPL says you can't distribute anything is with its "liberty or > death" clause. It says that if you cannot distribute it under the > terms of the GPL (so that you would also need access to the source > code), then you can't distribute it at all. I guess that if you want > to leak the code, you have to leak all of it. Since Airbus doesn't > have copyright on the code they modified (the original authors who > GPLed it still have that copyright, under the interpretation of > derived works), they can't claim copyright infringement. > > Anyways, it seems to me that at least in spirit, someone who manages > to distribute secretly-modified GPLed code is not doing any wrong. > Like we say in Spanish, "ladrón que roba a ladrón, tiene cien años de > perdón" (a thief who steals from another thief has a hundred years of > forgiveness).
Airbus only have to make the source code available to it's distributees: the purchasers of planes. It doesn't have to make the SC available to anyone else. Now as to whether misappropriating that source code is a crime is beyond my knowledge. debian-legal would probably know. - -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA ESPN makes baseball players better. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFIOcRUS9HxQb37XmcRAv87AKCiimArtmZQqu9EN5Js58pfIo2TqACfcbYV dPnAcor9GcQscjAOMK9qyBM= =FgE/ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
