Re: SFLC chooses wrong court

[mike3]

On Sep 21, 1:59 pm, rjack <rjack@com> wrote:
<snip>
> Failing to distribute source code is a contract breach and not a
> violation of a work's permitted use under copyright law. There is
> obviously no provision under U.S. copyright law to *force* a party who
> has permission to copy and make derivative works to distribute those
> copyrighted works. Those actions are solely a contractual matter.
>

Under pure copyright law (ie. just flat copyright, no licenses), you
cannot redistribute the work, period. The GPL grants specific
permissions where you can do that. One of the conditions is that
you must also distribute source. If you do not do that, your use does
not fall under the scope of the permissions, and hence the law's
prohibition remains in effect. So yes, they _can_ sue for copyright
infringement.