Slashdot Mirror
Open Source Licensing
This has been a particular headache for embedded systems manufacturers. If the engineers take advantage of the openness of Linux and make some tweaks to the part that is officially Linux, the company must to distribute their changes too. If they merely create software that works like a regular program, then there's no need to distribute anything. (Notice the ASP in the URL!) I know at least one very sharp businessman who explained to me how he carefully made sure the proprietary code in his system would only be dynamically linked to the GPL-protected code. If he left things statically linked, he would be legally bound to release all of his code and his investors wouldn't allow that.
"You had to work with developers. We had to create a build process that very carefully keeps things separate. If we weren't able to do that, we wouldn't have been acquired," he told me.
Rosen's book is a guide for anyone who's trying to walk that line. It dissects the major (GPL, BSD, Netscape, Apache, etc.) as a lawyer would: this kind of legal writing is always eye opening for me ,because the courts often make decisions differently from programmers. They value abstract issues like damages and pay attention to the often nebulous concept of who "owns" a piece of code. Thanks to the hard work of the lawyers at SCO, the distinctions will continue to be important to everyone experimenting with open source.
There are a surprisingly large number of distinctions, both big and small, between the different licenses. For most of us, the differences don't matter. But it's fascinating to watch a lawyer take them apart and compare and contrast them. The BSD license and the Apache license aren't the same, even though they're close cousins. Who would have known?
This book is a wonderful start on the topic. But by the end, it's clear that it's only just the beginning. There are deep philosophical questions awaiting the movement. The distinction between statically and dynamically linked code was easier to define in the past, long before modern languages like Java and the emergence of the Internet. Are web services specified by a hard-coded WSDL file, an example of dynamic or static linking? Can the DNS service change a static IP address into a dynamic link? Enquiring minds want to know. Rosen's book is a great way to begin the exploration of these topics.
You can purchase Open Source Licensing: Software Freedom and Intellectual Property Law from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
His Trademark law article and his explanation of fair use seem particularly useful.
In soviet russia, You ask not what country do for you, but what you do for country!
Oh wait...
From the writeup:
/usr/src/linux directory on the web? Hell no.
If the engineers take advantage of the openness of Linux and make some tweaks to the part that is officially Linux, the company must to distribute their changes too.
Actually thats not true. You don't have to distribute code if you aren't distributing the kernel. (or program, or whatever). Does the person who has patches his sources, for example when testing for the linux kernel for the developers, have to publish his
As soon as you use that phrase, you are assuming a specific interpretation of the 3 legal constructs. Those of us who reject that particular interpretation are automatically locked out of the discussion, which I suspect is the purpose of the phrase.
What Copyright, Patents, and Trademarks do is impose a 'temporary monopoly' onto something intellectual that otherwise would not have limits. The nature of the monopoly may be different (Is it for an exact 'copyable' work of art such as an audio/visual work, or writing....is is a process where the words/diagrams used to describe the process are not critical, but the process is ... or is it part of a virtual identity), and
the time limits may be different, but the phrase "temporary monopoly" is
the essence of these legal structures.
If we can't start from that basis, then there is no way to have the discussion without quickly breaking down. The metaphor of property just does not make sense outside of physical objects as ideas are infinitely copyable, and can be spontaneously created ("thought of") in different places and time in isolation from each other. With physical objects there is a natural monopoly: the land, animal, person, object or whatever physical object can only exist in one place at any given time, and in the world outside of science fiction and magic do not just "appear out of thin air".
Creating an arbitrary legal limit on how something can be copied is clearly government intervention in the natural world to create a monopoly. Who benefits from that monopoly, and what the costs are, and how these things have changed over time can be brought up to interpretation and debate, but the basic concept behind the government granted temporary monopoly cannot be debated.
AdsJunction.com Ad Network
The main thing managers have to somehow learn is "if it is legal to do something with copyrighted code, it is legal to do it under the GPL".
GPL is a set of exceptions to standard copyright law. It says "if you do this, you can violate the copyright on this code".
It is amazing how few PHB's understand this. If you put a piece of code in that says "Copyright me, all rights reserved" they have not problem, and say "we'll replace that or ask for permission before we distribute". But put some GPL code in, or even link to an LGPL library, and they get all nervous and scared that somehow they will lose the entire company! That is just incredibly stupid, it is in fact safer than plain copyright, by definition!
While there are certainly some BSD types that get all upset when someone places their code under the GPL, they're not all that common. Most of us don't really care... with one exception. There have been cases where "GPL-types" have taken BSD licensed code and relicensed it under the GPL just because they didn't like the BSD license. Not only is this a violation of the BSD license, but it's quite rude.
Oh, and to correct a point. You may not "relicense" any BSD licensed software. The terms of the license do not permit it. You may not "file off" the BSD texts and replace them with the GPL. However, you may redistribute it under the terms of the GPL. So in actual practice it doesn't make that much difference.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
" he carefully made sure the proprietary code in his system would only be dynamically linked to the GPL-protected code."
According to the GPL FAQ even dynamically linking proprietary code with GPL code is not allowed. See in particular GPL and plugins, Mere Aggregation, and Windows Runtime and GPL.
My future's determined by Thieves, thugs, and vermin -- The Offspring
If you distribute MyApp it must be under the GPL regardless of whether you have made changes to LibFoo. Well, at least if linking is considered to be "combining two modules into one program". See the GPL FAQ, and specifically this.
This signature is not in the public domain.