Re: GPL Violation of 'sveasoft' with GPL Linux Kernel/Busybox +code

From: Valdis . Kletnieks
Date: Tue Nov 09 2004 - 15:49:36 EST


On Tue, 09 Nov 2004 12:23:08 PST, David Schwartz said:

> Umm, they restrict you from distributing. You don't get new updates if you
> distribute.

A possibly important legal point is that they never actually restrict your
rights to distribute everything they've given you.

Barring a contract that *obligates* them to provide you with future binary
updates, I can't see much to hang a GPL violation on. They never stop you
from distributing your current stuff - they merely don't provide you with
*future* (and quite possibly never-actually-happening) software. 100% of what
you *do* receive from them you can redistribute.

Yes, it's sleazy, but barring a contractual obligation, probably not illegal.

(If they're not shipping *future* updates out of the kindness of their heart,
without a contract obligating it, then I'm in deep shit because I haven't shipped
the LSM I said I'd be posting, but which hasn't happened because of other problems
I had with -rc1-mm3. Think about whether you want to be in that boat... ;)

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