[fpc-pascal] Notice: Possible copyright infringements in FPC code base

[Jonas Maebe]

On 17 Jan 2008, at 12:18, Vinzent Hoefler wrote:

> On Thursday 17 January 2008 11:54, Jonas Maebe wrote:
>> On 17 Jan 2008, at 08:02, Vinzent Hoefler wrote:
>>> But given it is GPL your customer may decide to redistribute the
>>> source,
>>> as you gave him explicit permission with the GPL to do so. It would
>>> simply put all your other code under GPL, too.
>>
>> And that is yet another misunderstanding of the GPL: it would *not*
>> automatically make all the other code of that program GPL.
>
> Well, well, I didn't say *that*.

Sorry, that's how I understood "It would simply put all your other  
code under GPL, too.".

>> If you do not license the rest of the source code under the GPL (or
>> under a GPL-compatible license), you are simply infringing on the
>> copyright of the author(s) of the GPL code: your are using that code
>> in a way which is not allowed by the GPL.
>
> Ok, yes. If you read it this way. OTOH it said "with full source  
> code",
> so as a customer I'd "assume" at least, that everything is GPLed here,
> even if it does not say so explicitely in each single source file.
>
> And even then, you would be allowed to give it to the customer as  
> is, as
> you're providing the full source code as required by the GPL.

The GPL requires more than full source code, it also requires that the  
customer has the same rights to make modifications and redistribute  
everything under the GPL/GPL-compatible license(s). So no, simply  
giving the full source code to the customer is not enough: everything  
must also be licensed under a GPL/GPL-compatible license.

>> In any case, whoever receives a program containing a mixture of GPL
>> and GPL-incompatible code, is not allowed to further distribute it
>> either (because he would infringe on the copyright of author(s) of
>> the GPL code just as much as the initial distributor).
>
> Sorry, but that's not true per se. I *am* allowed to use GPL code in  
> an
> internal project without redistributing it.

Yes, that's correct. But then you're no longer talking about customers.


Jonas