IPL as a burden

[Angelo Schneider]

Gregor Hoffleit <gregor at mediasupervision.de>
Citates from the GPL:
> Well, the GPL says this:
> 
>     "Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not
> covered by this License; they are outside its scope.  The act of running the
> Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only
> if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of
> having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on
> what the Program does."
> 

Gregor Hoffleit <gregor at mediasupervision.de>
Concludes:
> 
> I.e. the GPL doesn't restrict the act of running the program, and if
> somebody else redistributes the program, he can't impose any restrictions
> on running the program either.
> 

I dissagree, with the conclusion. The GPL lets it open wether there is
or might be a restriction on the act of running the program.

Probably this is not intended by the GPL, but in the citate above, its
clearly stated: "the license does not restrict runnning of a program",
this means it does not SAY anything about the running of the program.
You can not draw the conclusion that it does allow everything and
requires all changes to allow everything. In fact this would be
impossible. E.G. you add a peace of source code written in SPARC
assembler, this implies the restriction that the sourcecode only runs on
SPARC compatible runtime environments.
Also you could invent restrictions like: this code may never run on a
nuclear war head controller.
The GPL does nothing to prefent this.

Regards,
       Angelo
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