Oded Arbel wrote:
I certainly agree with you that in this case, the onus of making the
code open does not lie with its developers (who have no knowledge of
and have never used WINE), but rather with the user who did use WINE,
which is a thorny mess I have no idea how to solve ;-)
No, this is absured. The user has neither means nor obligation. If the
developer, who has the sources, cannot be said to have created derived
work, why should a user, who has no means of changing the software at
all, be held liable for anything?
There is really no point in keeping the GPL license out of it,
The GPL is irrelevant. If the software is not derived work, neither GPL
nor any other license has any legal leg to stand on. Discussing whether
the GPL does or does not cover a specific case can only start after you
can show that the case in point is derived work to begin with.
because the
GPL does not mandate only developers - like all copyright licenses, it
also mandate the user.
Like all copyright licenses, it does not. It covers only people who want
to copy (not use). Read section 5 of the GPL.
While taking it a bit to the extreme (and I don't think anybody would try
to enforce it) with our hypothetic Winw, the user who tries to run Win32
application might be considered infringing on the Winw GPL license just by
using it. I guess this is one of the reasons the real Wine uses LGPL.
Noone can enforce anything, even if they tried, anything against a user.
There is no copying taking place.
--
Oded
Shachar
--
Shachar Shemesh
Open Source integration consultant
Home page & resume - http://www.shemesh.biz/
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