Upholding the first sale doctrine
Upholding the first sale doctrine
Posted Mar 22, 2013 19:23 UTC (Fri) by dark (guest, #8483)In reply to: Upholding the first sale doctrine by giraffedata
Parent article: Upholding the first sale doctrine
The GPL foresaw this :) Version 2 says the offer should be to give the source to "any third party", and version 3 says "anyone who possesses the object code".
Perhaps the third party won't be able to enforce this directly, but if the offer isn't honored then the copyright holder will have an issue to raise about the original distribution.
Posted Mar 23, 2013 3:09 UTC (Sat)
by giraffedata (guest, #1954)
[Link]
That does seem to take care of it; thanks.
But it also runs into another thing that has always made me uneasy about GPL: causality. The condition is that you make the offer, not that you honor it in the future. You meet the conditions of the license by including the offer with your copy, thus you're licensed to make that copy. You meant it at the time, but two years later, someone attempts to take you up on your offer and you say, "bite me." Does that mean your offer is retroactively not genuine and you retroactively didn't have permission to make the copy and we rewrite history?
Upholding the first sale doctrine
The GPL foresaw this :) Version 2 says the offer should be to give the source to "any third party", and version 3 says "anyone who possesses the object code".