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Re: Mathworks-hosted GPL'd software


From: Jaroslav Hajek
Subject: Re: Mathworks-hosted GPL'd software
Date: Tue, 16 Feb 2010 07:07:53 +0100

On Mon, Feb 15, 2010 at 10:47 PM, Judd Storrs <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 15, 2010 at 3:43 PM, Jaroslav Hajek <address@hidden> wrote:
>> :D Come on, you must see that this is a pure nonsense. You
>> accidentally (or intentionally) omitted the important point
>> 3.5) Make all OpenBSD contributors and hosting servers get their
>> OpenBSD sources from my public place.
>
> Did you omit the part where the Mathworks is requiring exclusive
> redistribution rights over user files on FX and forbids independent or
> secondary redistribution? Maybe I missed that part.
>

I suppose you answered yourself by reading on. This was just to
disprove your obviously flawed analogy.

>> Without this, I could not of course sue anybody, because I distributed
>> nothing to them. Under the copyright law, it *does* matter whom you
>> got the code from.
>
> It may be different over there and I'm certainly not a lawyer, but I'm
> pretty sure that in the US you cannot sue for theft or misuse of
> someone else's property. If you think your neighbor smashed your
> friends car, *you* don't get to go to court and sue you neighbour for
> damages, your friend does.

But this is a poor analogy. What if I rent my friend's car, and my
neighbor steals it from me? Can I sue him?
I don't actually know, but I suppose I can, because it's sort of my
problem if it was stolen from me.

> Only the copyright holder or assignees have
> legal standing to pursue action in court (
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_%28law%29 ). Without copyright
> you cannot sue for infringement. Period. End of story. (inb4 "...but
> copyright isn't property! Outrage!")
>
> The only grounds for action Mathworks has would be ToS violation. ToS
> violation is not a question about copyright licensing.
>

Yes, I agree. MathWorks could sue you for violating the terms under
which they distributed the sources to you, and which the ToS were part
of. You violated their sublicense. I don't think that all
(sub)licensing terms are required to be in a single place (or are
they?), so the fact that the ToS are not injected into the downloaded
files changes nothing, even though it smells like a dirty trick.

> I don't speak Czech and I'm not a lawyer, but your translation of the
> quoted seems to me to relate to permitting copyright transfer.

No, it's about transfer of the rights allowed by a license (a
sublicense). I think that's something different.
The BSD license grants you some rights and by redistributing the
source you grant those rights to someone else, because your license
permits you to do that. At least that's how I understand
redistribution works. Do you think this is not true?
Or that it's different in the US?

best regards

-- 
RNDr. Jaroslav Hajek, PhD
computing expert & GNU Octave developer
Aeronautical Research and Test Institute (VZLU)
Prague, Czech Republic
url: www.highegg.matfyz.cz


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