Mahesh T. Pai scripsit: > That is a problem with the law, not with the GNU GPL. The GPL ccannot, > and does not seek to override the law.
But the GPL does say: if one person cannot receive and redistribute, no one can, at least within a single country. > You need to clarify what you mean by `distribution of GNU s/w to them > is forbidden by law'. Can I still give them non-free (or did you mean > non-gnu-but-free?) software? No. > The next part of your question, `... and if they do happen to have GNU > s/o on any computers they may own, they cannot redistribute it.' GPL > does not really apply in most jurisdictions* if a person does not want > to redistribute the software. But the GPL is intended to guarantee that any recipient has the same rights as any sender. A person thus constrained doesn't have those rights. > * I think that in some jurisdictions, the users cannot modify software > for their own use. AFAIK. The U.S. right to do so is very narrow: it can be done only (a) in order to make the software to run on a machine of a type other than that it was originally intended for, or (b) for archival purposes. See 17 U.S.C. 117. -- Is a chair finely made tragic or comic? Is the John Cowan portrait of Mona Lisa good if I desire to see [EMAIL PROTECTED] it? Is the bust of Sir Philip Crampton lyrical, www.ccil.org/~cowan epical or dramatic? If a man hacking in fury www.reutershealth.com at a block of wood make there an image of a cow, is that image a work of art? If not, why not? --Stephen Dedalus -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
