From the customer's perspective

From the customer's perspective

Posted Dec 4, 2003 10:18 UTC (Thu) by MathFox (guest, #6104)
In reply to: From the customer's perspective by JoeBuck
Parent article: The GPL Is a License, not a Contract

One thing I have no idea about is whether GPL violation can ever be a criminal rather than a civil matter, as other forms of copyright infringement can be.

Legally seen: copyright infringement is copyright infringement and you can be criminally prosecuted for GPL infringement. So far the theory. In practice I don't think that a prosecutor will go after a GPL violator because

1. there is little economic damage done,
2. they lack specific knowledge about free software,
3. GPL violations aren't allways clear cut. (It is easy to hide a "written offer" for sourcecode within 4.7 Gb of data.)

So I think that vigilance in the free software movement will remain the main defence against GPL infringement.

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