Re: [ANNOUNCE] GIT 1.5.4

From: Michael Poole <mdpoole-izmaev5cut1afugrpc6u6w@public.gmane.org>
Date: Feb 7, 2008, 16:02 UTC
Message-ID: <87sl0469gb.fsf@graviton.dyn.troilus.org>
In-Reply-To: <86tzkksuua.fsf-Gv3ZRPJT63HkqtzbHXq1RqVXKuFTiq87@public.gmane.org>

David Kastrup writes:

Show 5 quoted lines

> I think that most countries will grant some right to the purchaser of a
> physical copy of copyrighted material.  For example, I doubt there are
> countries where it is prohibited to read a book you have bought (via a
> channel authorized by the copyright holder) when it contains no explicit
> license granting you the right to read it.

I see two serious dis-analogies here:

How many users of msysgit purchase a physical copy of it? (I suspect this is a relevant difference in the US due to its commerce codes, and maybe in other common law countries; it probably is not so important in civil law countries, where exchange of consideration is not a requirement to form a contract.)

Reading a literary work is typically not a reserved right, either; while it seems good to treat executing a computer program in the same way as reading a book, all copyright regimes that I know of give consideration to the copy that is made to RAM for most computers. (I will ignore the implications for devices that have execute-in-place non-volatile memory -- I am not a lawyer, and those devices are probably too new to be addressed by courts yet.)

Michael Poole

[Also- The git list did not receive my previous mail and probably will not receive this one either. vger.kernel.org issues a bogus bounce, shown in part below. I apologize for hijacking the thread this way, but mail to postmaster-at-vger bounces for the same reason.

Error in "rcvdfrom" envelope address:

	75.145.205-121-BusName-sterling.va.richmond.hfc.comcastbusiness.net!^Q
	^								    ^-illegal control character
	 \-Extraneous program text

.. where my mail host does not use that name for any reason; vger seems to be doing a DNS PTR lookup, then mangling the response.]