6 Aug
2009
6 Aug
'09
4:37 p.m.
On Thursday 06 August 2009 13:06:01 drew Roberts wrote:
On Thursday 06 August 2009 10:05:17 Raymond Martin
wrote:
Eben Moglen in http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/publications/lu-12.html
"Because there's nothing complex or controversial about the license's
substantive provisions, I have never even seen a serious argument that the GPL exceeds a
licensor's powers. But it is sometimes said that the GPL can't be enforced because
users haven't ``accepted'' it.
This claim is based on a misunderstanding. The license does not require anyone to accept
it in order to acquire, install, use, inspect, or even experimentally modify GPL'd
software. All of those activities are either forbidden or controlled by proprietary
software firms, so they require you to accept a license, including contractual provisions
outside the reach of copyright, before you can use their works. The free software movement
thinks all those activities are rights, which all users ought to have; we don't even
want to cover those activities by license. Almost everyone who uses GPL'd software
from day to day needs no license, and accepts none. The GPL only obliges you if you
distribute software made from GPL'd code, and only needs to be accepted when
redistribution occurs. And because no one can ever redistribute without a license, we can
safely presume that anyone redistributing GPL'd software intended to accept the GPL.
After all, the GPL requires each copy of covered software to include the license text, so
everyone is fully informed."
Check that line near the end: "no one can ever redistribute without a license, we can
safely presume that anyone redistributing GPL'd software intended to accept the
GPL". Now this is a lawyer for free software saying almost exactly
what I have. The assumption is that if you distribute the software then you
are intending to accept the license by doing so. Thus the license applies even
if you are breaking some rule or law regardless of ignorance or intention.
If that is not clear enough I do not know what is. Show me how this leading
legal representative for free software has got it wrong! The evidence is
clear. You distribute it, then you are accepting the license and it applies
to your code.
What possible counter-argument can there be left?
Raymond
On Thursday 06 August 2009 08:59:31 drew Roberts
wrote:
Nope, sorry, I get your theory but disagree. (I think RMS agrees with me
here as I pointed to in another post.) The license can say what it likes
but the license is not the law. One can ignore the license, not accept it
and break the law instead.
Then the author of the included code has a legal remedy since copyright law
has been broken.. They can go to court and the courts will deal with the
issue accordingly.
On Wednesday 05 August 2009 21:26:19 Raymond
Martin wrote:
The code is GPL once you distribute it mixed with other GPL code and it
still can be put out under another license by the original author. So you
are splitting hairs where the context of the discussion needs to be
considered.
It was understood about an original authors copyrights. Nonetheless, any
code mixed with GPL code and distributed automatically becomes GPL
regardless of any other distribution of the same code under another
license.
An author does not have to give the code a license for it to come under
GPL, the act of combining it with GPL code and distributing brings the
GPL into force. The combining is considered a modified version of the
original which must be distributed under the same license.
See section A.2, subsection 5 of the GPL (version 2 in this case). Read
the sentence "Therefore, by modifying, or distributing the Program (or
any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this
License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying,
distributing, and or modifying the Program or works based on it.
End of story. This was all in the context of distribution.
Perhaps this was not
clear.
No, it was clear. The GPL cannot make someone else's code GPL *if* they
don't claim their own code to be GPL.
In your given context though, you indicate that the code claimed to be
GPL which would make it GPL because the author gave a GPL license to
it, not because it contained another author's GPL code.
Now an author *has* to GPL their own code that contains another
author's GPL code *or* be guilty of copyright violations but the second
option is available to the first author and the courts will have to
sort it. Any combination with other GPL stuff
automatically puts the
code under GPL. The distributing party is accepting the GPL by their own
actions. Distributing the resultant product causes the GPL to come into
effect.
Only if you don't intend to break copyright law must you GPL your code. It
is not something that the GPL can accomplish in and of itself. The law does
not give the license that power to my understanding of it. The author must
GPL the combined code, the original is obviously still GPL as per the
original license.
> If they want to distribute their original code under a different license
> that can also be done.