On Sunday 03 April 2005 14:12, Devdas Bhagat wrote:

On 03/04/05 12:26 +0530, Rony Bill wrote:

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Devdas Bhagat wrote:

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This depends on the particular contract you sign with the vendor.

I spent Sunday rereading the GPL2. I was quite sure earlier I am 100% sure now. The GPL is explicit and absolutely clear. The recepient of gpld software is entitled to his rights as guaranteed by the gpl. The distributor of gpld software has his licence to distribute revoked automatically if he abrogates any of these rights. There is no doubt about this at all. No contract can change this because if the first party offers you a contract violating the gpl (as in preventing you from distributing, modifying, creating derivatives of your copy of the software packages) he automatically has his licence to distribute revoked, and therfore he not you is doing something illegal.

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Dear Devdas, by vendors I was refering to the services offered by software suppliers who only charge for copying and courier of any linux distro from their list, which includes names like Suse, Mandrake and more. If the multi-cd packs are a direct copy of the original *package*

It is illegal if and only if the copy contains software with EULAs and / or, incase of RH any of the RH trademarks and logos. It is not illegal to redistribute gpld software. Irrespective of ANY contract you may have signed. If the contract restricts your rights as assigned to you by the GPL, the right of the first party to distribute is automatically revoked. The affected party in this case is you, and the contributors of the package. If you have given a consideration ( cash, barter, anything), You can ask for a return of the consideration + costs, and return the package to RH. The developers can sue RH for breach of copyright and claim damages. You cant sue for breach of copyright and damages as you are not a copyright holder of a package in the distro although you are affected. The copyright holder cannot sue you. He can only serve a cease and desist notice against you. However incase of the gpl the copyright holder has given you a right so he is not going to serve any cease and desist. So even if you have signed a contract with RH, You can copy and redistribute completely legally subject to removal of EULA packages and trade marks.

Happy TM_Logo + EULA package stripping and Happier legal copying. Long live the GPL.

This depends on the policy of the original vendor wrt the pack. If the first buyer is restrained from copying and selling the CDs as is, because they include copyrighted material/trademarks/whatever, then such redistribution is a violation of contract.

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provided by the makers, then wouldn't its installation *as it is* be a violation of copyrights and thus a pirated one? If any company wants to use this *package* it would have to buy it.

In the case of distributions like Mandrake personal, Gentoo, or Fedora or ..., the copyright owner states that you can make unlimited copies of it without restriction provided that their credits and trademarks stay intact.

To illustrate, distribution of _RHEL_ by a non RH authorised vendor is illegal.

Absolutely not. Caveat - remove RH trade marks and NVIDIA / winmodem drivers.

I would check out the particular terms and conditions for that distribution.

No need to. As explained earlier.

rgds jtd