>>I certainly agree with you that in this case, the onus of making the >>code open does not lie with its developers (who have no knowledge of >>and have never used WINE), but rather with the user who did use WINE, >>which is a thorny mess I have no idea how to solve ;-) >> >> >> > No, this is absured. The user has neither means nor obligation. If the > developer, who has the sources, cannot be said to have created derived > work, why should a user, who has no means of changing the software at > all, be held liable for anything?
There is really no point in keeping the GPL license out of it, because the GPL does not mandate only developers - like all copyright licenses, it also mandate the user. Users are not allowed to just copy and use any software given to them - unless a license permits this, they are forbidden from doing so by the copyright laws set forth by their local legal system. usually that means you can't use a software unless you are allowed to do so by the copyright owner of the software. as such - its also up to the user to hold by the terms set in the GPL if said user would like to continue using software distributed under such terms. While taking it a bit to the extreme (and I don't think anybody would try to enforce it) with our hypothetic Winw, the user who tries to run Win32 application might be considered infringing on the Winw GPL license just by using it. I guess this is one of the reasons the real Wine uses LGPL. -- Oded ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
