Garrett: The ongoing fight against GPL enforcement

Posted Feb 1, 2012 0:15 UTC (Wed) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106)
In reply to: Garrett: The ongoing fight against GPL enforcement by dlang
Parent article: Garrett: The ongoing fight against GPL enforcement

The principle of first sale applies equally to copies of proprietary software and copies of GPL software. If you don't need a distribution license in the proprietary case, you don't need to accept the GPL either. On the other hand, if you *do* need a distribution license, then compliance with its terms is entirely your responsibility either way. For the GPL, all you really need to do is package up the source you used to build your own binaries and distribute it along with them. Making sure you can rebuild the binaries you're redistributing from the source you received isn't a particularly high hurdle.

If course, if you still think proprietary licenses are easier, you're welcome to avoid GPL software. It's your loss.

Garrett: The ongoing fight against GPL enforcement

Posted Feb 1, 2012 0:23 UTC (Wed) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

as I understand it, the key is if the transaction is structured as a sale or as a license.

yes, there are conflicting cases on this that have weakened first sale, but there's still teeth in it.

Garrett: The ongoing fight against GPL enforcement

Posted Feb 1, 2012 5:52 UTC (Wed) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

going in to more detail.

yes, first sale applies to GPL code as well.

If it didn't you would see people sueing wallmart, best buy, etc instead of Cisco (after all, you probably didn't buy the netgear access point directly from Cisco.

Looking at this from another way.

If someone doesn't copy anything, then there is no way for a copyright license to apply.

So if you were to buy devices with GPL code in them, not copy anything, and sell them again, there is no way that a copyright license can force you to do anything as you are not making any copy.

What "first sale" would _not_ give you is any right to make copies of the GPL code

This doesn't help the supplier problem because the supplier isn't providing you with a separate copy of the binary for each device, they are giving you source code (or a file binary) that you then copy on to each device.