RE: People, not GPL [was: Re: Driver Model]

David Schwartz
2003-09-15T20:18:06Z

> David Schwartz wrote:

> > This is a publication restriction, not a usage restriction.
> > Your phrasing
> > above is like saying, "you can't put bullets into a gun that you use to
> > shoot a police officer". The restriction is on the shooting, not the
> > loading.

> Are you saying that publishing a program does not constitute a "usage"
> of the program and/or its source code?

No, I'm saying that publishing a program is not *just* a usage of the
program. You can have full usage rights to a program and not be able to
publish it because publication requires granting rights to other people,
which is not use.

Similarly, I can give you full rights to use my house but you still can't
sell my house. That's not because "selling" isn't a way of "using", it's
because selling is "using and then some". The additional thing that
distribution has that usage doesn't is the ability to grant rights to
others.

The GPL is quite clear on this point:

"Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not
covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of
running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program
is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the
Program (independent of having been made by running the Program).
Whether that is true depends on what the Program does."

When you distribute a copyrighted work, you are not just distributing the
physical work but you are also conveying at last some rights of usage to
other people. Conveying rights of usage is legally distinct from having
rights of usage.

Unrestricted use does not mean you can do whatever you please so long as it
somehow involves usage, it just means that the restrictions aren't upon the
usage itself. So anything that is *just* usage is okay. Anything that is
usage and something else is okay so long as the something else is okay. You
can have full unrestricted use of my bat and you still can't use it to beat
a stranger, but that's because you couldn't use anything to beat a stranger,
not because you don't have full use of the bat.

Distribution is usage and something else. The something else being the
conveying of usage rights to others. If you have unrestricted use, you can
still only distribute if you have the rights to the something else.

DS