In general, FCC does not license manufacturers to sell transmitters until FCC issues a type approval. The purpose of the type approval is to assure that the device would not radiate unlawfully. There are a few exceptions: you can build your own equipment in the Amateur (ham radio) service, and I think some Part 15 (low power unlicensed) equipment.
What about when you want your software to be combined with other Free / Open Source software (even code that may be incompatible with the GPL), but don't want to leave the door wide open to non-Free software? Would the GPL-with-exceptions license work?
I don't think so. The reason is that there isn't good legal language to separate the licenses you like from ones you don't like. About the best you can say is "any license accepted by the Open Source Initiative", but then you have to add in language to make that apply to the entire program, so that people won't think they can use a BSD piece as glue between your licensed piece and a proprietary piece.
The way that Linux and GCC do it is that they talk to separate programs (or separate source files in GCC's case). Which doesn't apply to every program.
On you latest product, how will the modifications that are provided back to you by the GPL folk handled?
OK, you've hit on the important part. I call this "Why more people don't contribute modifications to OpenOffice".
It does make little sense to dual license and expect the community to sign all of their work over to you without even a coffee and a jelly donut in return for their trouble. Especially if you are Sun Microsystems, a company known to still have some significant cash and assets on hand.
So, I, not being as rich as Sun Microsystems, promise this: if you sign over the copyright to your modification I will covenant to: 1) provide you an unlimited license to your own work, including the right to relicense. and 2) keep my work incorporating your work under an Open Source license for two further years of development, or remove your contribution.
The funny thing about this is that I had heard of Slashdot for some months and didn't participate. Otherwise, I would probably have an even lower number.
Can you #include header files from GPLed code in proprietary code?
I would never recommend doing so. And I'll tell you why anyone who answers otherwise is wrong.
You might, sometimes, be able to include something in a program and win a case about it. But your goal is not to win the case. Your goal, to operate your employer without losing money unnecessarily, is to not get sued in the first place. And although you can never prevent an idiot from suing you, you can make it clear to anyone else that your execution has been so proper that there's nothing to sue you for because they could not win. That is the kind of execution I try to create for my customers.
Always stupidity. Never malice. Malice may happen when they try to deal with the problem after it's brought to them. But there isn't really a smart reason to violate a Free Software license, because you can do anything you want without doing so. You just have to know how.
Copyright law does not say. Indeed, most of copyright law was written before software and it doesn't necessarily make sense in the context of software.
So, you can not rely on an API being a reliable boundary between one piece of software and another, except if you use GPL3. FSF has actually provided you a way to reliably use an API as a boundary. This is contrary to those bad things other posters were saying about FSF. The API has to be a full open standard.
If there is open source software in a product to be delivered, I would expect the supplier to look at the contract and then tell my client "we can't sign this because we DO have open source software in our code."
Yes. But this can turn on you, too. I end up explaining to customers at big companies where I do public speaking why they don't want to own all the rights to my performance. It's not as if they want to be responsible for what I say, as if it were a work for hire.
And of course I need to be able to perform it elsewhere.
If you have to do kernel-level work, and some is proprietary and some is GPL, put the proprietary part in one processor and the GPL part in another processor, and don't share anything but a narrow and well-defined communication path between them. Then, they are separate programs.
If it doesn't have to be kernel-level, or doesn't have to be locked down really tightly, just put your separate programs in separate executable files, and run them as separate processes.
If I recall, there was some IM client that used Purple (the Pidgin backend) and hosted a local server. This was GPL'd. Then their proprietary client would talk with this server, theoretically allowing them to use the Purple library without being under the GPL.
I call this daemonization, the practice of putting software in a server (or daemon, in the old Unix parlance) for the purpose of avoiding the license.
If it is just for avoiding the license, and has no other technical purpose, I think there's a chance that someone could convince a judge to consider it infringement. But I have no case to point to.
who becomes responsible for the perpetuation of child source code?
The party that distributed the binary. They can't just say "get the source from Bruce" if Bruce didn't distribute the binary.
This is a problem now that GPL code is in cars. Car dealers don't know about source code. So, the auto maker who doesn't want to cause problems for people who sell their cars can contract to provide the GPL obligation fulfillment for all of the dealers and third-parties in the world who would transfer some car part containing GPL code. Then, those third parties can point at the manufacturer, and the manufacturer is obligated to do it.
can any third parties take my code and maintain it for me without needing my consent?
Yes. If you really care about this, you can trademark the name of your program and require that other folks call it something else. That way, your reputation won't suffer.
I'm sure the lawyers have their own language that says that whatever they are telling you might not be the truth.
Their lips are moving:-) Actually, I have noticed that attorneys, since their job is to win for their customer, are in the habit of saying what will win, not what is right. I pinned one down publicly, once, online. He had just said what would win the argument rather than what he knew to be true, and had assumed I would not realize. And he'd been admitted to practice before the Supreme Court.
No, AC. GPL and the modern BSD license (not the one with the advertising clause) are compatible. The poster was making a joke about Theo, and about the cult of BSD not being entirely self-consistent on what they want you to be able to do, and not do.
How far does that go? I mean, in the extreme, wouldn't that mean it's illegal for a cop to tell kids that they need to obey the speed limit?
There's a good explanation in Wikipedia:
In the common law, legal advice is the giving of a formal opinion regarding the substance or procedure of the law by an officer of the court (such as solicitor or barrister), ordinarily in exchange for financial or other tangible compensation. Advice given without remuneration is normally referred to as being pro bono publico (in the public good), or colloquially, pro bono.
Legal advice is distinguished from legal information which is the reiteration of legal fact. Legal information can be conveyed by a parking meter, sign or by other forms of notice such as a warning by a law enforcement officer. Printed legal materials, such as directions and how-to manuals, are generally not considered legal advice. Accordingly, directions on how to fill in a motion form and other court documents do not constitute legal advice.
AFAIR, [Google has] their own proprietary filesystem for Linux, yet they do not open its source.
See Google File System in wikipedia. It says that the filesystem isn't in the kernel, it's in user mode. So, it's not really part of Linux. I'm not sure it's so relevant any longer, anyway. There's been a lot of Linux cluster filesystem development by Oracle and others since then.
I do believe the GPL does need to be re-written in a far less verbose manner as many executives still do not understand it.
Some folks have written GPL equivalents without the preamble. They've not become popular. The problem these days is not really the GPL. It is that there have been thousands of meaningful court cases about software creating precedents helpful or harmful, and there is a lot of rather pernicious legislation like DMCA. So, we have to craft a license that will protect us from a tower of existing legal paper higher than I can figure. The fact that you can still read it in one sitting is pretty impressive. If you read the findings in recent court cases, especially the appeal in the JMRI case, it's pretty clear that judges like the GPL. And that's what we really need. If it doesn't protect you in court, why is it there at all?
Does anyone know why we always give those "IANAL" disclaimers?
In the United States, it is not legal for anyone but an attorney whom you have retained, and who is admitted to the applicable Bar Association, to give you legal advice. Thus, people like me make clear that they are not attorneys, and that our advice, although it concerns the law, is something less than legal advice. It's your responsibility to check it out with your lawyer. I would be happy to talk with your lawyer, too.
The easy answer to the problem: don't redistribute whatever it is you make.
It sounds easy, but it is actually very difficult to keep from distributing. You see, a distribution is a transfer between any two legal entities. So, for example, you hire a consultant and give him a copy of the software. Then you decide not to use the consultant any longer. He's annoyed, and he asserts his GPL rights on your entire product, and distributes it. You go to sue, and the copyright holder of the GPL piece gets involved and makes a case that you don't have the rights you think you did. Your NDA does not apply to GPL software because GPL prohibits you from adding incompatible terms.
In some cases, transfer between divisions, especially partnerships with one or more additional firms, are distribution. So, in practice, I think that purposefully not distributing is too difficult to do reliably.
It also does not work against Affero GPL3. If you perform that as a service, you have to give up the source code.
So, it is much easier to keep your software separate as I advise.
The FSF were the wrong folks to do this with, because they do not want to help you make proprietary software. I will help you make both Free and Proprietary if you wish, and I'll make sure they don't get mixed in a harmful way. I charge for the service - I've got to make a living. You also need an attorney, if you don't yet have one. Part of the time I'd be working with your attorney, and part with you.
When I visit a company to help them develop their Open Source strategy, I schedule a 50-minute talk for the top execs and the head of legal. This talk tells them what I am doing with the middle management, gives them some anti-propaganda to reset their opinions and expectations about Open Source, and establishes who I am working with in the company so that when they have issues about Open Source they know where to go.
That's about all I can get out of the top execs. But I get a lot of attention from the middle management folks who actually do the work.
Some of the recent lawsuits have got their attention. But what it often does is cause them to put a "no open source" clause in their default supplier contract. I signed a contract with a big phone company that promised I would not give them any Open Source! Of course, I was giving them advice.
Slashdot Mirror
In general, FCC does not license manufacturers to sell transmitters until FCC issues a type approval. The purpose of the type approval is to assure that the device would not radiate unlawfully. There are a few exceptions: you can build your own equipment in the Amateur (ham radio) service, and I think some Part 15 (low power unlicensed) equipment.
Bruce
Bruce
I don't think so. The reason is that there isn't good legal language to separate the licenses you like from ones you don't like. About the best you can say is "any license accepted by the Open Source Initiative", but then you have to add in language to make that apply to the entire program, so that people won't think they can use a BSD piece as glue between your licensed piece and a proprietary piece.
The way that Linux and GCC do it is that they talk to separate programs (or separate source files in GCC's case). Which doesn't apply to every program.
Bruce
OK, you've hit on the important part. I call this "Why more people don't contribute modifications to OpenOffice".
It does make little sense to dual license and expect the community to sign all of their work over to you without even a coffee and a jelly donut in return for their trouble. Especially if you are Sun Microsystems, a company known to still have some significant cash and assets on hand.
So, I, not being as rich as Sun Microsystems, promise this: if you sign over the copyright to your modification I will covenant to: 1) provide you an unlimited license to your own work, including the right to relicense. and 2) keep my work incorporating your work under an Open Source license for two further years of development, or remove your contribution.
And if you want the coffee, come over sometime.
How does that sound?
Bruce
The funny thing about this is that I had heard of Slashdot for some months and didn't participate. Otherwise, I would probably have an even lower number.
I would never recommend doing so. And I'll tell you why anyone who answers otherwise is wrong.
You might, sometimes, be able to include something in a program and win a case about it. But your goal is not to win the case. Your goal, to operate your employer without losing money unnecessarily, is to not get sued in the first place. And although you can never prevent an idiot from suing you, you can make it clear to anyone else that your execution has been so proper that there's nothing to sue you for because they could not win. That is the kind of execution I try to create for my customers.
Bruce
Always stupidity. Never malice. Malice may happen when they try to deal with the problem after it's brought to them. But there isn't really a smart reason to violate a Free Software license, because you can do anything you want without doing so. You just have to know how.
Thanks
Bruce
GPL3 fixes this for the GPL part. Which is one reason I take GPL3 seriously for my own work.
Copyright law does not say. Indeed, most of copyright law was written before software and it doesn't necessarily make sense in the context of software.
So, you can not rely on an API being a reliable boundary between one piece of software and another, except if you use GPL3. FSF has actually provided you a way to reliably use an API as a boundary. This is contrary to those bad things other posters were saying about FSF. The API has to be a full open standard.
Bruce
It's a nice sunny day in Berkeley.
Yes. But this can turn on you, too. I end up explaining to customers at big companies where I do public speaking why they don't want to own all the rights to my performance. It's not as if they want to be responsible for what I say, as if it were a work for hire.
And of course I need to be able to perform it elsewhere.
Bruce
If you have to do kernel-level work, and some is proprietary and some is GPL, put the proprietary part in one processor and the GPL part in another processor, and don't share anything but a narrow and well-defined communication path between them. Then, they are separate programs.
If it doesn't have to be kernel-level, or doesn't have to be locked down really tightly, just put your separate programs in separate executable files, and run them as separate processes.
Bruce
I call this daemonization, the practice of putting software in a server (or daemon, in the old Unix parlance) for the purpose of avoiding the license.
If it is just for avoiding the license, and has no other technical purpose, I think there's a chance that someone could convince a judge to consider it infringement. But I have no case to point to.
Bruce
The party that distributed the binary. They can't just say "get the source from Bruce" if Bruce didn't distribute the binary.
This is a problem now that GPL code is in cars. Car dealers don't know about source code. So, the auto maker who doesn't want to cause problems for people who sell their cars can contract to provide the GPL obligation fulfillment for all of the dealers and third-parties in the world who would transfer some car part containing GPL code. Then, those third parties can point at the manufacturer, and the manufacturer is obligated to do it.
Yes. If you really care about this, you can trademark the name of your program and require that other folks call it something else. That way, your reputation won't suffer.
Thanks
Bruce
Their lips are moving :-) Actually, I have noticed that attorneys, since their job is to win for their customer, are in the habit of saying what will win, not what is right. I pinned one down publicly, once, online. He had just said what would win the argument rather than what he knew to be true, and had assumed I would not realize. And he'd been admitted to practice before the Supreme Court.
Bruce
No, AC. GPL and the modern BSD license (not the one with the advertising clause) are compatible. The poster was making a joke about Theo, and about the cult of BSD not being entirely self-consistent on what they want you to be able to do, and not do.
There's a good explanation in Wikipedia:
See Google File System in wikipedia. It says that the filesystem isn't in the kernel, it's in user mode. So, it's not really part of Linux. I'm not sure it's so relevant any longer, anyway. There's been a lot of Linux cluster filesystem development by Oracle and others since then.
Bruce
Some folks have written GPL equivalents without the preamble. They've not become popular. The problem these days is not really the GPL. It is that there have been thousands of meaningful court cases about software creating precedents helpful or harmful, and there is a lot of rather pernicious legislation like DMCA. So, we have to craft a license that will protect us from a tower of existing legal paper higher than I can figure. The fact that you can still read it in one sitting is pretty impressive. If you read the findings in recent court cases, especially the appeal in the JMRI case, it's pretty clear that judges like the GPL. And that's what we really need. If it doesn't protect you in court, why is it there at all?
Bruce
Thanks
Bruce
This is why we have Affero GPL3, the special version for software as a service.
In the United States, it is not legal for anyone but an attorney whom you have retained, and who is admitted to the applicable Bar Association, to give you legal advice. Thus, people like me make clear that they are not attorneys, and that our advice, although it concerns the law, is something less than legal advice. It's your responsibility to check it out with your lawyer. I would be happy to talk with your lawyer, too.
Bruce
It sounds easy, but it is actually very difficult to keep from distributing. You see, a distribution is a transfer between any two legal entities. So, for example, you hire a consultant and give him a copy of the software. Then you decide not to use the consultant any longer. He's annoyed, and he asserts his GPL rights on your entire product, and distributes it. You go to sue, and the copyright holder of the GPL piece gets involved and makes a case that you don't have the rights you think you did. Your NDA does not apply to GPL software because GPL prohibits you from adding incompatible terms.
In some cases, transfer between divisions, especially partnerships with one or more additional firms, are distribution. So, in practice, I think that purposefully not distributing is too difficult to do reliably. It also does not work against Affero GPL3. If you perform that as a service, you have to give up the source code.
So, it is much easier to keep your software separate as I advise.
Thanks
Bruce
The FSF were the wrong folks to do this with, because they do not want to help you make proprietary software. I will help you make both Free and Proprietary if you wish, and I'll make sure they don't get mixed in a harmful way. I charge for the service - I've got to make a living. You also need an attorney, if you don't yet have one. Part of the time I'd be working with your attorney, and part with you.
Bruce
When I visit a company to help them develop their Open Source strategy, I schedule a 50-minute talk for the top execs and the head of legal. This talk tells them what I am doing with the middle management, gives them some anti-propaganda to reset their opinions and expectations about Open Source, and establishes who I am working with in the company so that when they have issues about Open Source they know where to go.
That's about all I can get out of the top execs. But I get a lot of attention from the middle management folks who actually do the work.
Some of the recent lawsuits have got their attention. But what it often does is cause them to put a "no open source" clause in their default supplier contract. I signed a contract with a big phone company that promised I would not give them any Open Source! Of course, I was giving them advice.
Bruce