Fedora Freedom and linux-libre

David Woodhouse dwmw2 at infradead.org
Sat Jun 14 15:07:24 UTC 2008


On Sat, 2008-06-14 at 10:31 -0400, Alan Cox wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 14, 2008 at 03:21:09PM +0100, David Woodhouse wrote:
> > On Sat, 2008-06-14 at 06:26 -0400, Alan Cox wrote:
> > > > Nobody's talking about power over other unrelated works.  We're
> > > 
> > > Yes you are. 
> > 
> > No, he's not.
> 
> In your opinion, which seems at odds with most. 

No, I was being _very_ careful to leave matters of opinion out of it, as
the second footnote should have made clear.

I was quoting the GPL, and very lightly paraphrasing it to help clear up
the confusion which you seem intent on seeding.

I grant you that there is scope for different opinions on the question
of precisely _when_ the GPL restricts your right to incorporate the
Program in a collective work, and when you can call it "mere aggregation
on a volume of a storage medium".

But there is no reasonable scope for different opinions on the question
of whether the GPL _may_, under copyright law, restrict your right to
incorporate the GPL'd Program in a collective work.

Copyright law quite clearly denies you that permission, and unless it is
granted back to you by the copyright-holder (i.e. by the GPL), it
remains forbidden. And it does _not_ require any kind of magic "power
over unrelated works". That phrase seems just to be a deliberate
misdirection.

-- 
dwmw2




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