GPL and private contracts

Posted Mar 25, 2007 1:15 UTC (Sun) by giraffedata (guest, #1954)
In reply to: GPL and private contracts by malor
Parent article: The Torvalds Transcript (InformationWeek)

giraffe seems to be asserting that the GPL is somehow unethical or something in that it 'interferes with'

It's "or something," and in particular I'm asserting that GPL is unusual among copyright licensing schemes. Nothing more. I jumped into this thread when someone made an incorrect statement about what one can do with GPL code, based on reasoning that would be sound for any conventional licensing scheme. I went beyond correcting the particular misstatement to explain you have to use a whole different mindset when looking at what's allowed with GPL code.

The misstatement, IIRC, was that a downstream distributor could make a private deal with his distribuee in which the latter doesn't avail himself of GPL freedoms, and the copyright owner wouldn't have anything to say about it.