Re: Question About GNU General Public License

[David Kastrup]

<telford@xenon.triode.net.au> writes:

> David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> wrote:
> 
> > Certainly.  But you'll have a hard time explaining to a court that
> > what you sold to the customer and that what the customer desired
> > to have was an incomplete program that will not run.  In
> > particular if you give the customer tested instructions and
> > scripts for combining your program with copyrighted material.
> 
> A set of tools and instructions to perform a legal act.

It is only legal if just the customer is responsible for doing it.

> > If I sell bombs with instructions "fill in fertilizer XYZ-34 here",
> > can I explain to a court of law that I am not actually selling bombs
> > since the things won't explode before the customer fills in
> > the fertilizer which I don't sell?
> 
> A set of tools and instructions to perform an illegal act.

But if just the customer is responsible for doing it, then the vendor
would not be doing anything illegal.

> Seems quite different to me...

Who is responsible for the outcome of an assembly according to
manufacturer's instructions?

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum