On Jun 15, 2007, Daniel Hazelton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Friday 15 June 2007 02:59:31 Jesper Juhl wrote:
>> it doesn't say anything about being able to run a compiled version >> of that source on any specific hardware. > And you are correct. It is also clear, thanks to language directly > in the GPLv2 itself, that there is no "intent" of the license to > cover that situation. You're again confusing legal terms with the intent. The legal terms provide an indication of the intent, but the preamble, along with the free software definition it alludes to, do an even better job at that. That said, the letter of the GPL explicitly says that the act of running the program is not restricted, and that this is outside the scope of the license. It's a copyright license, and per US law, running software is not regulated by copyright; this is not so elsewhere, and local interpretation indicates that the intent of the license is indeed to grant unlimited permission to run the program and modified versions thereof, based on the free software definition. But then, when someone says "I won't let you run modified versions of this software on this hardware I'm selling you", is this not a further restriction on the exercise of the rights granted in the license? And, per the spirit, if the manufacturer can still install and run modified versions of the software on that hardware, is it not failing to comply with the spirit of passing on all the rights that you have? -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ FSF Latin America Board Member http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
