On Tue, 2011-02-01 at 12:44 -0700, Tom Callaway wrote: > On 01/31/2011 11:23 AM, Matt McCutchen wrote: > > hey say that > > the copyright holder's actions never "violate" the GPL, at least with > > respect to distribution and modification. This would appear consistent > > with my interpretation that the distribution and modification terms are > > conditions of the copyright license offered to licensees, and not > > licensor commitments. > > Except that it is logically invalid. If the copyright holder is not > promising via the GPL to provide the source to those who are using the > Program under the terms, how are those parties expected to pass the > source along to anyone else? That's too bad for them. Since they cannot meet the conditions of the distribution license, they cannot legally distribute the software at all: the license is unusable. This is just a special case of the principle stated in GPLv2 section 7. So it is possible to have a work that is licensed under the GPL and yet cannot be distributed, but this is just a technicality. One would hope that references to "releasing a work under GPLvX" in contracts and the like would be interpreted to entail releasing the source, according to the parties' intent. -- Matt _______________________________________________ legal mailing list legal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/legal
