Re: [Flightgear-users] Legal or not ?- "Pro Flight Simulator" aka FlightGear on Ebay

[Hal V. E. <hv...@as...>]

On Sunday 30 December 2007 20:18:52 Arnt Karlsen wrote:
> On Sun, 9 Dec 2007 00:02:31 +0100 (CET), Heiko wrote in message
>
> <574...@we...>:
> > --- Matthieu Pupat <mat...@pu...> schrieb:
> > > Unfortunately this does not show up if you search Flight Gear.
> > > A guy has 3 different sales for Flight Gear at $7.99:
> > >
> > > http://cgi.ebay.com/FLIGHT-GEAR-AVIATION-FLIGHT-SIMULATOR-Microsoft-Win
> > >dows_W0QQitemZ360001655397QQihZ023QQcategoryZ80336QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ
> > >1QQcmdZViewItem
> >
> > well we have to say, that selling Flightgear is legal
> > as long you regard the GNU GPL - so this example is
> > legal ( note at the bottom)
>
> ..referring to this?: "Note to eBay Staff: We are authorized to
> distribute this software by the copyright holder under GNU General
> Public License (GPL). A copy of the license is available upon request.
> Please ask for it before taking action"
>
> ..such bull does not fly with me, this wanker is offering a copy
> of the _license_, "upon request" no less, he is _not_ offering
> a copy of the source.
>
> ..I'd sue.

If you ask him (I did so I know) he will reply that he will be glad to send 
you a link to his server where you can download the source code.  The GPL 
does not require that the source code offer be part of the "advertising" but 
only part of the distribution and that the offer be in a predominate place.  
So as long as the download of the software has that offer and it is setup so 
that the user will always see the source code offer at least when installing 
the software then this is legal.

This particular vendor appears to me to be working within the limits setup by 
the GPL license.  You may not like it but that is how this works and as long 
has he stays with in those limits there is nothing that can be done to stop 
him short of changing the license for FlightGear.  Even that would only 
affect newer versions of the software since he could continue doing the same 
things with the current version.  

Hal