A little GPL riddle (was: GPL as an evaluation license)

[Oleg Goldshmidt]

On Mon, Apr 11, 2011 at 12:33 AM, Aviad Mandel <aviad.mandel at gmail.com> wrote:
> For the sake of fairness, I'll say that the questions I had about my own
> little venture are answered, thank you all.
>
> But for pure curiosity, I'm left wondering how effective GPL really is.
>
> Let's leave the microwave for a second, and think about a proprietary web
> software browser, for a desktop, using a lot of GPLed code, and should
> remain closed source.
>
> The trick is like this: The installation program generates the executables
> by compiling the GPLed sources (Gentoo style) and linking them with the
> proprietary object code. What you get is a binary nobody is allowed to copy,
> but it's already on the hard disk ready for running.
>
> Don't tell me not to do this. I'm not going to. But can anyone tell why this
> would be illegal? Where's the moment something illegal happens?
>
> And please, I know that the mixed binary is derived work and must be
> distributed further under the same license. But the thing is that nobody
> really wants to distribute it, so what's the problem?

Someone gave you, i.e., "conveyed", "distributed", that object code
whose only purpose is to create the browser when linked to some GPLed
code. Therefore this object code is derivative work of the GPL code.
Therefore if it is not GPLed the aforementioned "someone" is in
violation of GPL. A user of such a browser who wants to have a look at
or modify the browser will have a petty good case.

IANAL.

-- 
Oleg Goldshmidt | pub at goldshmidt.org