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Re: Irony


> 
> dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar) writes:
> 
> >> The BSD licence, for one.
> >
> > The BSD license is a Free Software license,
> 
> The BSD license doesn't say anything about the availability of
> sources, so software covered by the BSD license is not automatically
> free software.
> 
> > Public Domain software is of course Free Software for example even
> > though it has no licenses. 
> 
> Here's a similar problem.


There is a confusion here. Most certainly software is not Free Software
if it does not come with sources. That's true for *any* license. Suppose
I write a piece of software. I then give the binaries to you under the
GPL. That's fine I have not done anything wrong, the GPL that *I* issue
for *my* software on which *I* own the copyright does not require *me*
to give you anything. But because you have no sources you are stuck, you
don't have Free Software since you can't do anything with it (let alone
distribute it).

So for the BSD license, public domain software, and GPL'ed software, the
software is only Free Software if it comes with sources. The statements
in the GPL about sources are about what *YOU* can do with the software
that *I* give you, not about what I can do. If you get a binary copy
of GPL'ed software without the sources, you are indeed stuck.

There is a very common misconception that using the GPL places constraints
on the author and copyright holder. It does not. Now of course in the gcc
world, the copyright holder is the FSF, and we who work on gcc are indeed
obligated to pass on sources by virtue of the license granted to us by the
FSF which places obligations on us as licensees.


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