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Doubts Raised About Legal Soundness of GPL2

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the no-you're-unsound dept.

svonkie writes "Two prominent IP lawyers have warned that the all-pervasive General Public License version 2 (GPLv2) is legally unsound. They claim GPLv3 and AGPLv3 are much better suited for the realities of modern open source software. 'If you go back in time to when GPLv2 was written, I don't think people were aware of just how ubiquitous this license would become and how closely scrutinized it would be,' said Mark Radcliffe, partner at the firm DLA Piper and general counsel for the Open Source Initiative (OSI). 'At that time, open source was not something as broadly used as it is now.' Radcliffe was joined by Karen Copenhaver, partner at Choate Hall & Stewart and counsel for the Linux Foundation, for a GPL web conference hosted by the license-sniffing firm Black Duck software"

9 of 521 comments (clear)

  1. Not as bad as it sounds! by Sockatume · · Score: 4, Informative

    The article essentially says that the terminology used needs more rigorous definition, and needs to match more closely with the existing legal terminology. For example, their use of "derivative work" might have legal connotations that don't completely follow from the terms of the licence. It's not like they've determined there's some fundimental legal principle which brings the whole thing crashing down, as you see in EULAs for example.

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    No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
    1. Re:Not as bad as it sounds! by kestasjk · · Score: 5, Informative

      I chose the AGPL for a web project of mine, and the protection it gives is pretty essential. Without it someone could take the code, improve it and run their site based on it without sharing the improvements back.
      You may hate that etc, and prefer not to share the improvements back, but for my web project I've been able to add lots of improvements to my code that derivative sites wouldn't have been obliged to share otherwise, and everyone enjoys the better code as a result.

      If you don't think that's fair I'd be interested to hear why not.

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      // MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
    2. Re:Not as bad as it sounds! by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 4, Informative

      This is a work-around for the bug that copyright law does not define a public-performance right for software, although a similar right is defined for audio recordings, movies, and theatrical scripts.

      Thus, we had a loop-hole in that companies which performed the software over the net without ever distributing it can make substantive derivative works of the program from which they derive tremendous profit but have none of the obligations. Think of google in this context.

      I think the first FSF meeting where we discussed this was in 1994. It was seen as a significant problem even before google.

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      Bruce Perens.
  2. Re:Conspiracy? by Timothy+Brownawell · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'm wondering if this isn't just FUD to try to get people to switch to v3. Which is icky, but it did occur to me.

    I doubt it, the crappy language choice in v2 was one of the reasons for writing v3 in the first place (other reasons being that they wanted explicit anti-patent language, that Tivo had pissed off all the extremist nuts, and maybe a few others I don't recall offhand).

  3. To express GPLv2 ideology in GPLv3 framework by tepples · · Score: 3, Informative

    How much of this is about nudging Linus... pushing him, really... into applying GPL 3 to the Linux kernel?

    That can't happen without a rewrite. Too much of Linux is composed of patches written by unreachable authors and whose copyrights haven't been assigned to Mr. Torvalds or the Linux Foundation.

    And even then, Mr. Torvalds has stated that he prefers the spirit of GPLv2 to that of GPLv3. I'm pretty sure that the spirit of GPLv2 can be expressed in the GPLv3 framework by adding a set of exceptions, much like the Classpath license and the LGPLv3 are sets of exceptions to GPLv3.

  4. Re:Zealots caught in Gnu/Stallmans trap by Disgruntled+Goats · · Score: 5, Informative

    I wonder who pays these gentlemen.

    If you had read the summary you'd see they work for the OSI and the Linux Foundation. Hardly organizations that are anti-GPL, anti-FOSS or anti-Linux.

  5. Backduck is one Microsoft anti-FOSS front by SgtChaireBourne · · Score: 3, Informative

    I wonder who pays these gentlemen. And, again, who pays those who pay them...

    Blackduck is founded and stocked by Microsoft employees. Though it would be damning enough in this context to point out that it is an active Microsoft partner.

    SCO was a pre-existing company re-purposed several times, turned pump-n-dump, turned sock puppet. Blackduck was founded from the beginning for the activities it is engaged in.

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  6. Re:real issue, but is GPLv3 the solution? by nacturation · · Score: 3, Informative

    As the copyright holder, you're free to release the code to this one individual under whatever terms you want. Just because you released it once under one set of conditions doesn't mean that you're bound to release it to the MSU guy under the same conditions. Being the creator, you're free to re-license anything you want. Assuming your code isn't mixed up with someone else's, just license the Ruby code as a separate work.

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  7. Re:Cause and Effect by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    All three of them.

    Python and Apache are built with Microsoft's C compiler.
    The BSD kernel and userland predate gcc, but currently require it, though clang will most likely take gcc's place soon.