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Comment by mark-r | Hacker News Reader

I'm not entirely sure that's correct. If you try to sell something that relies on GPL software, it's considered a derivative work even if you don't distribute the GPL software with yours.

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It is a derivative work, but selling derivatives of GPL-ed software is entirely legal and not forbidden by the GPL. Distributing binaries (regardless if for free or not) of GPL-derived software without distributing the source from which the binaries were derived (or without offering a reasonable way of getting the source on demand) is forbidden by the GPL. Moreover, the source of the derivative work must be offered under the GPL.

(Edited to add the last statement above, for clarity.)

While that is true, as part of a derivative work, your users would have your source under GPL terms.

Absolutely you can sell, but your can't restrict user rights

This is correct - you not only must include the source code for your binary, you also must include it under the same terms as the original source code.

So if someone just happens to distribute the source code for Hancom Office before this is resolved in the courts, would he or she be in the free and clear?

Probably not. It's unlikely either party will want this to go to trial so it'll probably end in a settlement where the company buys a license on top of damages.

A license can't affect the copyright of any other code. So Hancom is just in violation of the GPL and has lost its right to use Ghostscript; it's not automatically GPL'd.

This is correct. Without a license, Hancom is liable for copyright infringement of the Artifex code if it continues distributing its product. It will be forced to either buy a license or reform its product to use an alternative, but it won't be forced to release its source code.

Agreed, I didn't mean to imply otherwise.

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