[OT] some weird GPL licensing questions

[Olaf Jan Schmidt]

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[Andreas Pour, Sa 14.02. 2004 23:01:23]
> I could not disagree more with that, but you can take the legal risk.

I don't have a company, so I won't take that risk. I also don't think that 
internal use should be allowed by the GPL, but according to the FSF, it 
is.


> For example, if you work for Company X, and I give you a gift, the gift
> is legally yours, regardless of what the company thinks (of course it
> can fire you for accepting the gift, but the gift is not legally the
> company's property).

Sure.

But to slightly change your example:
If you are the agent of a charity foundation, and I give you a gift for 
the foundation, then you cannot claim ownership of the gift because I 
physically handed it to you. I am sure you wouldn't call this slavery.

If my gift is a software license, and the license is the GPL, and the 
foundation is a company, then you do call this slavery. This is 
inconsistent.

Claiming that a GPLed software would need to be additionally licensed to 
at least one agent of the company is identical to claiming that no 
company can ever receive a complete and valid license for a GPLed 
software. But I am not aware of any passages in the GPL special-casing 
companies or foundations. This is why your arguments do not convince me, 
even if I would be very happy to discover that you are right.


> To take a sky view picture:  corporatism is a nasty trend in the world
> in which fictional legal entities get ever more rights and powers while
> humans continue to lose them.

I agree that this is a negative development. I am not in favour of 
corporatism, and I would like a software license that indeed clearly fits 
to your understanding of the GPL.

Olaf

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

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