On Thu, Aug 29, 2013 at 10:09 AM, Arnt Karlsen <[email protected]> wrote:
> <snip> > > ..only if said .gov entity want's to distribute said GPL code > on to e.g other .gov entities, employees etc "other people." > for strictly internal use in .gov entity with no distribution > to the outside and not for employee home use etc, there is no > distribution. > > -- > ..med vennlig hilsen = with Kind Regards from Arnt Karlsen > ...with a number of polar bear hunters in his ancestry... > Scenarios always come in sets of three: > best case, worst case, and just in case. > > "home use" is a broad term and I am not convince just because a user uses it at home that it was distributed. Take for example that this is a laptop used at work and at home, no distribution from my point of view. Perhaps it is a PC given to the user for his home office, still not distribution the way I understand. Perhaps it is given to the user for testing purposes, not distribution however I think there are differing opinions here. Outside of this I think we all could agree that there was a distribution. Just my two sense. On Thu, Aug 29, 2013 at 6:28 PM, Bradley M. Kuhn <[email protected]> wrote: > Bruce Perens wrote: > > who was for a time a Busybox developer and has been the main plaintiff > > represented by the Conservancy. > > Erik is indeed a member of Conservancy's GPL enforcement coalition of > copyright holders. But, I think you misspoke there slightly, Bruce: Erik > and > Conservancy were co-Plaintiffs in our GPL enforcement lawsuit together. > Dan > Ravicher represented us as legal counsel in the proceedings. > > Before that, Erik did enforcement on his own with his own lawyers, and he > also > coordinated with FSF circa 2003 (during my time as FSF's Executive > Director) > on the (in)famous Linksys WRT54G violation. > > So, it comes down to what you mean by "represents". Many people use that > word primarily to mean "as legal counsel". Conservancy, in this case, > coordinates individual Free Software copyright holders to help them > enforce the GPL, and (when needed) Conservancy helps find lawyers to > represent them, and our org. (Conservancy also holds some copyrights that > developers have assigned to us voluntarily, too.) Conservancy has various > different legal counsel and law firms who have helped us over the years in > doing (initially) BusyBox and (now) Linux, BusyBox, Samba, and et al > enforcement. > > > (I always have to remind everyone that IANAL... people always seem to > think I > am. I assume you have the same problem, Bruce. I, like Bruce, am a > non-lawyer who has spent far too much time around lawyers. :) > > > As it happens, some of the surveilance tools out there are made by Erik > > Andersen, ... As far as I am aware, the surveilance tools use Busybox. > > I don't believe what Erik's company develops would correctly be classified > as > "surveillance tools". I haven't received distribution myself of Erik's > product, but he described it to me on the phone once, and it sounds more > like > a user-guided forensic analysis tool (e.g., to extract data of a hard drive > seized during a criminal case and make sure that the disk isn't > corrupted/tampered with in the process of extracting the data.) > > Assuming the warrants were granted legitimately, and truly met the USA > Constitutional requirements for such [0], I don't have any objection to > such > a tool. I want our government to enforce, say, child pornography laws and > be > able to collect the evidence from the suspect's computers. I'm, in fact, > really glad GPL'd software that I've contributed to can help in such an > endeavor! > > Erik did tell me the software uses BusyBox and Erik assured me that there > is a clear offer for source right on the bootable media of the product. :) > I > am not in possession of that offer for source though. I suppose you could > email Erik and ask for it, but I suspect that the .config files for BusyBox > and buildroot are the only additional CCS that isn't already upstreamed. :) > But, I nevertheless don't think Erik's is the software in question that > started this discussion. > > -- bkuhn > > [0] Off topic, but last year I served jury duty on a USA federal grand > jury. > After the experience, I am very disturbed that USA's grand jury process > does not function justly. I worked really hard to fix that, but there > is > very little one juror can do, especially on grand juries which are > majority vote rather than unanimous. :( ... But, this footnote is > clearly > off-topic for this list... other than to say we probably can't find > the cause of problems in the USA justice system via a GPL violation. :) > >
