Post #2762072

2026-05-14 15:48 UTC

what i’m reading from that is that both parties must agree that the work has been conveyed. with the risk of going all sovcit, if the conveyed item is a binary, and the producer does not send the source code to the consumer as instructed by the license, can the consumer really pull the source and distribute it? surely if the license is broken the work falls back on default permissions, e.g. all rights reserved?

Replies (2)

@4am@lemmy.zip 2026-05-14 16:54

Maybe read the GPL ;) But the language defines that if you distribute a binary, you must make the source available, and that source is allowed to be taken, modified, redistributed as binary and source, as long as the person doing the modifications attributes you and all other previous authors. It doesn’t matter if that binary comes as a firmware on a device the user purchased. The distributor does not have to distribute the source with the binary, they just have to make it available, for free, and they cannot stop anyone using it as defined above. Breaking the license does not change how the software is licensed, it just puts the entity doing the violations in violation of a license.

Open ##2762071
@nyan@lemmy.cafe 2026-05-14 16:52

In the general case, the person or persons who distributed the binary would then have done so illegally. In order to distribute, you have to follow the terms of the license. So them attempting to go after anyone downstream of them at that point is sort of like calling the police because someone stole your drug stash. And if there's an upstream beyond the illegal distributors, they're practically waving a "Sue me now!" placard in their direction. The *originator* of the code, above whom there is no upstream, is allowed to offer it under more than one license (including a mixture of free and closed licenses), but the specific license in force has to be specified with each distributed copy.

Open ##2979390