Re: Linux in a binary world... a doomsday scenario

Theodore Ts'o
2005-12-06T20:53:22Z

On Tue, Dec 06, 2005 at 08:18:27PM +0000, Alan Cox wrote:
> On Maw, 2005-12-06 at 14:38 -0500, Theodore Ts'o wrote:
> > Conspiracy to commit what offence? There's nothing wrong with linking
> > GPL'ed code with propietary code, in the privacy of your own home (or
> > server). The offence only happens when you distribute the resulting
> > derived work....
>
> In many countries moving the data from hard disk to memory is copying,
> ditto to cache, and that is established caselaw.

Ah, but the GPL hangs its requirements off of "distribution", not
copying per se. Also note the following statement from the GPL:

"The act of running the Program is not restricted"

But this is not legal advice, and I am not a lawyer; anyone who is
wants to figure out what they can or can't do shouldn't be talking to
either Alan or me; they should be talking to a real, live lawyer.

- Ted