Re: GPL and other licences

[David Kastrup]

"Alfred M\. Szmidt" <ams@gnu.org> writes:

>    >    If you are an employee of mine and get access to software in
>    >    my possession for the purpose of job, you are not permitted to
>    >    make copies for your private use.
>    >
>    > If the license explicitly states so, yes.
>
>    Wrong.  You are not the licensee.  The licensee is the company.
>    The license is completely irrelevant for you.
>
> You obviously didn't mean to write that in that form.

I meant to write exactly what I did.  Somebody who admits to being
incapable of grasping the concept of "internal use" should not go
reinterpreting the words of someone else.

> If the license isn't relevant to me, then the whole discussion is
> quite pointless. :-)

Wrong.  The whole point of "internal use" is that the license is not
relevant to a company employee.

> The license obviously does apply to me.  Otherwise one could simple
> do what the heck one wants.

Oh sure.  Like you can just take a car and drive it away when its
purchase contract does not apply to you.

You are completely confused.  _Without_ a license and _without_
properly acquired ownership of a copy (and acting on behalf of a
company does not form a requisition of ownership for you), your rights
are exactly squat.

>    But you have no license to do whatever you want with the content
>    if you just have a copy that is the property of the company you
>    are working for.
>
> Since I legally aquired the content,

Look up "acquire" in a dictionary of law.  You did no such thing if
the software is work material of your company.  You don't acquire a
company car, and you don't acquire company software.

> the license applies, and if the content contains GPLed software, I
> am free to distribute it.

As long as you are not living in a communistic state, company and
worker property remain separate.  Even if you are living in a
communistic state, the unity is merely theoretical.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum