Ger Remmers wrote:
What is more I think that he has that "right to know" irrespective of
your views or consent. Whether I like that or not is irrelevant.
And here we disagree. No developer has "the right" to know what I use the
program for as long as I don't claim the program to be my product.
At first sight that appears to be a valid position. However considering
the case below Westinghouse weren't claiming that they owned BusyBox,
merely distributing it with complete disregard for the license. Hence
the owner /does/ have a right to know it's being used, even if the user
is entirely silent about what they're doing with the software.
The fact that in some cases the owner goes on record as saying that he's
not currently interested doesn't mean that he doesn't have the right to
know.
I'm sure that you're aware that there is a small but growing number of
companies who have been forced to admit that they were abusing the
(L)GPL: do you think that they consented to the software's owners
finding out that they were doing that?
I wasn't aware of that ( I don't keep tabs on the software world).
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/04/gpl_violation_westinghouse/
With respect, if you aren't aware of what's going on you might refrain
from commenting on who's got rights to do what. Anyway, this probably
isn't a good place to continue this subthread.
--
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk
[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]
--
_______________________________________________
Lazarus mailing list
Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org
http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
