[OT] some weird GPL licensing questions

[Andreas Pour]

Thiago Macieira wrote:
> 
> Andreas Pour wrote:
> >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..
> 
> And herein lies the issue: "who receives a copy". I am not considering
> that deploying a program within a company, on the company's own
> computers, is considered distribution. (deploy != distribute)

It depends how it is installed.  Generally it requires given someone a copy to
install it.  At that point you have distributed to this "someone" and you cannot
restrict this "someone" from further distribution.  Of course, this "someone"
may of his own accord elect not to distribute further.

> The GPL expressly allows any licensee to make as many copies as he wants
> and the GPL does not impose any restriction on what you do with it (=
> you can make copies *and* install them).

The point you miss, I think, is that a company cannot act in the real world.  It
takes a human to do so.  This human has rights under the GPL the moment he
receives a copy, which rights the company cannot take away.
 
> Imagine the following situation: a company's tech department goes
> overnight to every workstation and install a copy of the program. The
> next morning, the employees arrive and use the program. At no moment
> did they receive a copy of the software.

In this case, for sure the tech deparment employees received copies and the
company cannot restrict them from further redistribution (i.e., outside the
company).

Now whether the employee sitting at the computer's hard drive has a copy is a
more tricky question, but IMO is also still clear.  You simply need to look at
the terms of the GPL for this, to see if there is a "distribution" involved. 
Given the subject matter of the GPL, I think a court would look at the copyright
meaning of "distribution" (as that is the core of copyright law) to see if it is
a distribution to the employee.

This brings up the magazine hypothetical I gave earlier.  If Company X buys a
magazine (assume no license, a general magazine purchase in a store), can it
make copies on its own paper and provide them to all its employees to use?  No,
I think even though Company X may argue it owns all the copies, a court would
say it violated the copyright b/c there was "copying and distributing" involved.

So I think in your scenario the company copied and distributed the software to
each employee, and hence each employee has the rights the GPL provides to a
distributee.

> If we extend this to absurdity, imagine you come to my house and sit at
> my computer. Does this grant you automatically license to every program
> I have installed, GPL or no?

Depends on the license of the program.  Under the GPL, I would think no (it is
more like you reading the Company's copy of the magazine, rather than the
company making a copy and distributing it to you).

> If you telnet/ssh into a server, does this
> grant you a license to the software installed there? (If so, I think I
> may have a few Solaris licenses to collect...)

This also depends on the license, but it gets more complicated (copying a
program into memory is a copying for copyright purposes and this branch of law
is more complex than we need to get into for purposes of this discussion).  But
I would note that many MS licenses for example do require extra payment for each
person that might use the machine, including simply connecting to it for getting
data from a database, for example.
 
> With traditional EULAs, you may not copy the software without
> transferring all your rights to the recipient (thus leaving you with
> none, but that's beside the point). If installing a software on a
> company's own computer were considered distributing,

EULAs typically have specific provisions for corporate licensees that set forth
the specific limitations.   Otherwise I think you simply assume one employee may
use that license and the license applies to that par. employee, rather than the
corporation.

> then each employee
> using the software would need to have a license of said software --
> which would in turn let him simply take his copy home.

It all depends on the terms of the license.  Typically if a corporation buys a
company-wide license the license specifies the circumstances under which the
software may be used.  But again this is getting beyond the scope of the point: 
the GPL's requirements.

Ciao,

Dre

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