[OT] some weird GPL licensing questions

[Olaf Jan Schmidt]

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[Andreas Pour, Sa 14.02. 2004 01:53:01]
> Under the GPL I wonder how a company can receive a copy in the first
> place.  The GPL deals with the person who received a copy - and this is
> not a company.

Why not?

The GPL does not claim that only human persons can act as a recipient. 
This means that any legal person can become a recipient, being either a 
human person or a foundation or a government.

If a software is licensed to a company, then this license is _never_ 
refering to a particular human. If the human person who installed the 
software leaves the company (even if it is the boss), the license is 
still valid.

This also means that as long as a GPLed work does not leave the company, 
no redistribution to another legal person happens.


> Now your argument would be, assuming the company is the one with rights
> under the GPL, that telling an employee to go install a copy is not a
> redistribution to the employee.  But legally an employee and a company
> are separate persons, so there is a distribution.

No, because the employee is a member of the company. The company can only 
act via humans, who are each legally distrinct from the company. Your 
statement implies that humans can only legally act for their own person, 
but if this were true, no company could possible do anything.


> > And the
> > developers are usually bound by contracts which state what they
> > produce at the company, during working hours and using company's
> > hardware is company's properties and copyrights.
>
> If this clause is applied to GPL software then Section 6 of the GPL is
> violated

Why that? If this were true, then all code in Linux copyrighted by IBM 
would be in violation of the GPL. It was also written by employees who 
are not mentioned as the copyright owners.


> In other words, that don't work.  If it did, I could enter into a
> similar agreement with my customers, and avoid them getting GPL rights.

This would require you and your customers to set up a company or other 
foundation, and not to use the software for anything other than for the 
purposes of the company / foundation.


> What you seem to be missing is there is nothing magical about the
> employer / employee relationship.  If you argue it works for employer /
> employee, why not for government / subject, vendor / customer,
> contractor / client, etc.?

Because these different relationships are legally not the same.

IANAL, but AFAIU internal use may only be deployed by people who are 
entitled to act on behalf of the legal person who has licensed the 
software. For the government this would be the president, a minister, or 
simply an employee of the government if s/he has been told to do so.

I am not sure about the legal status of a contractor, but I do not think 
you could claim internal use in this case.

Olaf

- -- 
Olaf Jan Schmidt, KDE Accessibility Project
KDEAP co-maintainer, maintainer of http://accessibility.kde.org

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