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The license still applies even when the redistribution clause is not being exercised (else any edit on your machine would strip the license!). This is an unrema
by gumby 3y ago
The license still applies even when the redistribution clause is not being exercised (else any edit on your machine would strip the license!). This is an unremarkable part of the language and of contract law.
If you mix in other code that you don’t have the right to distribute into the GPL code this has the same kind of impact as doing that with non-GPL code.
- joshuaissac 3y agoYes, of course the licence applies even without redistribution. Without a copyright licence, the user does not have the right to use, modify or distribute the code. But what the licence applies to is the original work. If you replace half of the original work with your own work, then the GPL applies to the remaining half of the original work, while you would own the copyright to your own half of it. GPL requires you to license modifications under the GPL only if you redistribute them. But if what you are distributing is modified to the point of being completely independent of the original, with none of the original code or any dependency on it remaining, then the GPL is no longer relevant to it.
- d0mine 3y agoAccording to that logic, you may just rewrite any GPL code line by line and then apply any license you want to distribute the result. It doesn't sound right.
- joshuaissac 3y agoCopyright also applies to the structure of the code. So rewriting it line by line would not be enough to remove all of the GPL-licensed elements. You would also need to restructure and reorganise it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure,_sequence_and_organization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure,_sequence_and_organi...