The Industry choice

[Paul Rubin]

Bulba! <bulba at bulba.com> writes:
> From the viewpoint of looking at availability of source code A, 
> it's completely irrelevant if those guys are fishmongers or 
> make derived work A' and redistribute only binary of A'. Not 
> a single line of publicly available source code appeared or
> disappeared as the result of whatever they do. Amounts of
> binaries - yes, that is affected. But not the source code.

>From the viewpoint of the availability of Adobe Photoshop, it's
completely irrelevant if I run off a few hundred thousand copies on CD
in a warehouse by the waterfront and then sell them out of the back of
a truck at the flea market.  Not a single shrink-wrapped retail copy
of Photoshop disappeared from any stores as the result.  But Adobe
will still send the US Marshals to raid my operation with guns and
stuff.  I don't think you would approve of my illicit Photoshop
replication either.

So why should the situation be any different with GPL code?  If
someone wants to copy it, they need to do so according to the license.