[aur-general] Notification of GPL violation

[Manhong Dai]

On Fri, 2021-05-21 at 19:10 +0200, ente via aur-general wrote:
> On Fri, 2021-05-21 at 18:27 +0200, Ralf Mardorf via aur-general
> wrote:
> > Hi Manhong,
> > 
> > it's squishy to form an opinion related to violation of a
> > license and toleration of sensible modifications and sometimes even
> > to
> > distinguish between theft and fortuitousness.
> > 
> > If you wrote a song named "love song" composed of holding the note
> > c
> > for
> > 1000 beats and after that holding the note c# for another 1000
> > beats at
> > 120 beats per minute and a year later I write two songs and name
> > both
> > "love song", too, one composed of holding the note c for 1000 beats
> > at
> > 120 beats per minute and the other one holding the note c# for 1000
> > beats at 120 beats per minute. Would it make sense to argue related
> > author's rights?
> > 
> > Sometimes disputes make no sense. Several factors must be taken
> > into
> > account and often common sense can be used to rate, if it's worth
> > to
> > argue.
> > 
> > Regards,
> > Ralf
> 
> Hi Ralf,
> 
> 
> You example is clearly missing the point. Let's unwrap. 
> 
> Scenario 1: You did not know of the other song. You coincidently
> create
> the same song as someone else, no copyright will be applied. You
> simply
> did not copy anything. This example is not related to GPL at all.
> 
> Scenario 2: You did know about the song. You heard it in the radio.
> You
> liked the song, but you never actually did focus on the song trying
> to
> count how often each tone occured, you did not exactly measure the
> beats per minute, you did not search the internet for the exact
> details
> of the song. You rather got inspired by the song. You set down, you
> got
> creative and wrote down a brand new song which coincidently is the
> same
> song as published a year ago. You simply did not copy anything, GPL
> is
> not related at all.
> 
> In - broadly speaking - any other situation, you are copying. Copying
> is protected by the copyright. GPL grants you rights under certain
> conditions. If you don't fully comply with the restriction, you loose
> the rights.
> 
> There may be a fair use policy applying in certain situations. I am
> not
> aware, GPL grants any. As such: a patch file only containing 3 lines
> of
> the original is already copying. Writing those 3 lines "coincidently"
> is bullshit. Your purpose was never to be creative, your purpose was
> to
> write exactly those three lines. If I could "coincidently" write the
> same 3 lines in a patch file, then I could also "coincidently" type
> all
> the bits and bytes of the latest Star Wars movie in mp4 format by
> coincident and all copyright laws are dead the same second. So no,
> you
> did not write coincidently the same lines. You did copy.
> 
> Me personally I don't like the fact that big companies (unfortunately
> mine included) are earning a big pile of money using software they
> download for free from the internet without ever giving anything back
> to the community.
> 
> Now in this thread I got the feeling, many feel like "We are open
> source. We should not be monitored too close.". Arguments came up
> like
> "We do not distribute the software. We only distribute an
> installation
> script.". The latter one sounds very much like PirateBay, doesn't it?
> 
> Well, if we don't obey the GPL very strictly, why should those big
> companies do? Should we as members of the open source community not
> be
> the first to actually obey the GPL?
> 
> I am not blaming Arch Linux or any TU for wrong doing. I am not
> blaming
> anyone for anything because I am not a GPL / copyright expert. And I
> know it has been fixed already.
> 
> I just feel like supporting the opinion of Manhong and clearly
> opposing
> the mail of Ralf.
> 
> Oh, sorry to say Ralf: in any scenario you should never again
> consider
> to write a song! That song is horrible!

Finally someone with plenty of musicial cells stood up. Thx! :)

> 
> 
> 
> ente