[OT] some weird GPL licensing questions

[Andreas Pour]

Thiago Macieira wrote:
> 
> Andreas Pour wrote:
> >While this is apparently the FSF's position, it is IMO unequivocally
> > wrong. Intra-company distribution is still a distribution (ask e.g.
> > MS if it is OK to buy one copy of software for all employees of a
> > company)[1], and if the company tries to prevent employees from
> > re-distributing further, it is imposing additional obligations and
> > hence loses its right under the GPL to distribute at all.
> 
> That's not how I read it.
> 
> If a company has a license to deploy a certain number of installations
> of a given software (be it 1, 5, 10 or unlimited installations), they
> can install the software wherever they want. However, the user using
> the software is not the one to who received the license: the company
> is.

What does this have to do with the GPL?  I am not saying it is impossible to
have a company license which permits distribution to each employee; what I am
saying is that it is still a "distribution" and such a distribution must comply
with the license terms.  In the case of the GPL, we know what those terms are.

> Therefore, the user has no right to take software from the company's
> computer and redistribute it. Nor does he have right to claim a license
> be given to him.
> 
> That would be akin to an employee erasing the software from the
> company's computer and installing it on his personal notebook, then
> taking home. No, the software was licensed to the company.

Again, you are not claiming it is not a distribution, you are only claiming that
such a distribution may be compatible with the given license.

Read the GPL to see the terms for a distribution.  One of them is, that you
cannot restrict who receives a copy of the program from further redistribution. 
Most EULAs of course have exactly the opposite restriction (i.e., the
distributee is prohibited from further redistribution).

Ciao,

Dre

-- 
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely
believe they are free.
  -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe