Re: Elonex ONE+

Morten Juhl-Johansen Zölde-Fejér wrote:
> But are they not distributing the GPL version (as can be seen at Help >
> About Abiword)? If the program explicitly states that it is published
> under GPL, I do not see how it is possible to get around GPL obligations.
>
I do not believe that the presence of a notice that the software *can*
be available under the GPL
prevents its availability under other licenses as well. (5c in GPL3
makes this explicit, and multiple
licensing has precedence - Mozilla do it for a start)

> The GNU GPL offers obligations and rights.
> I would say that they *are* in breach of the contract, insofar as that
> offering the software, the have the obligation to supply you with the code
> - in a sense. If they point you to it or ask for shipping costs, they are
> allowed to do that.
>
I think you will find that their obligation is primarily to the
person(s) that licensed the code to
them. While I know that they are obligated to make the code available,
there is no contract
between me and Elonex that says that - only a copyright agreement
between Elonex and the
GPL software's copyright holders (that they have accepted by conveying
the covered
works) specifying that Elonex should offer it to me.

J.M. Maurer wrote:
> If they refuse to give AbiWord's source code to you, then they ARE in
> violation of the GPL. You don't need 'us' for that. YOU have the right
> to receive a copy of *our* code. That's how the GPL works :)
>
>
I am pretty sure that you are mistaken. *My* copyright is not being
violated. I have suffered no
injury in the eyes of the law. In effect, it would be as if Elonex have
relicensed the software (in breach
of an agreement *with someone else*) and provided a relicensed version
to me. I would not be
injured by this.

Remember, the GPL is *not* a contract, it is a copyright license.

Anyway, best to give them a chance to respond to my request. The
'support part of their website
is not fully deployed yet.

For what its worth, the Elonex appears to be very closely related to the
Aware A-View Standard
(see http://www.aware.com.tw/products.php, also called A-Book sometimes,
see also
http://www.ocworkbench.com/2007/aware/A-Book-AW-300/g1.htm). I can't see
how to get
any sources from them, either - and I'm pretty sure that they are
'upstream' to Elonex. I'm not
an Aware customer so I'm even less of a position to demand anything from
them.

James

And can I find the outgoing mails to Elonex and Aware? Can I heck.
That's what I get for using
Thunderbird and aox. Huh! :-(

-----------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to
abiword-user-request@abisource.com with the word
unsubscribe in the message body.
Received on Mon Aug 18 20:28:31 2008