Installshield 6 (inter-proc) patches

[Gerard Patel]

At 07:47 PM 13/12/2001 -0800, you wrote:
>
>What do others think?

I feel rather dismayed by the whole discussion.

First to all you lawyers who have already posted their legal opinion,
you can dismiss all that I will say : I'm not a lawyer and I don't 
want to be one.
It's only a low-level common sense point of view, what I think is 
right or wrong.

First a link :
http://www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.html

This is the philosophy of the gnu project, from the guy who
designed the cornerstone : the Gpl (I will say Gpl even if
what is in question here is LGpl : from my point of view, it
is only a technicality)
You will notice the enormous number of terms evoking public
rights, user rights, help your neighbour philosophy.

I have nothing against that by itself.

However, what I find surprising is the use of this philosophy.
You'll find many examples of that, in another of this thread's
posts for example :
>A few years back, Ingo Molnar
>(or Linux Kernel fame), wrote to the wine-devel list saying that he really
>wanted to contribute the project but didn't because of the lack of
>protection of his work from the licence.

Here is the keyword in my opinion : *his* work.
in this particular case Ingo Molnar could mean the right
thing of course, I can't say for sure from a short citation
- but there is so much more of this stuff.
Here is more if you want, from another poster :

>I -have- had to deal with companies stealing my GPL code

Here this is so much more clear.
*My* code. They have stolen from *me*. 
Where are the users's right ?

I don't want to say that it is all right to use Gpl code
in proprietary works. But I think that any legal (real)
action should - morally - only be done when an
user has been really wronged.

I think that a user getting proprietary work including gpl'ed
code could ask for a court to order the release of the full
code of the app he bought. 
He could ask for getting his money back for all the licenses
(beyond the first) that he bought, since he had the right
to manage the installation of additional copies himself.
He could ask the court to sweep aside any Eula limiting
the company responsibility since the hiding of Gpl code
removed his right to fix the bugs himself.
All this means civil litigation, damages, money.