Novell would not be able to stand in the way of this for long. We know the address of their corporation agent and can serve them the notice with a real process server. If they decline, it's known that they've declined, or have failed to respond, in a short time. And from that point on, you know they aren't a team player, and can proceed appropriately.
GPL3 will keep my software from being used in that sort of hardware, at least unless the manufacturer pays for the privilege. I think that's fair. It's damned annoying to be locked out of a box running my own software.
I can buy an analog TV converter box because the government is paying for me to have two of them. I can not buy a TV Guide on Screen converter box because none is available and the format is proprietary and DRM-locked.
At this point, TFA claims that the old users (defendants in a prospective evil lawsuit) will now have the burden of proof that they obtained the image under a Free license, and that this burden will likely prove too heavy for most to bear.
The original copyright holder would have to perjure himself when asked if the material had ever been available under that license. And could have to go to jail if found out.
There are many ways to prevail in an injust civil case if you are willing to risk criminal prosecution for perjury to do it. This has nothing to do with CC.
When you take someone's picture to use commercially, they have a right to be paid. Model release is how they sign away that right. This may also apply to inanimate objects in some cases. There are many venues that post that commercial use of photographs is prohibited without permission. And you can take a photo of someone else's copyrighted work, which would make your photo an unlicensed derived work.
I do more work in software, so am not the best one to explain this, although I'm sure there are legal guides for photographers.
However, I think you are getting bum advice from these attorneys you spoke with. For one, copyright is just that, you cannot expect a legal holding over something you bamboozled under your control.
That's right. Anyone who objects to the change has the absolute right to tell you not to make such a change to their code. And then you take their code out.
What I contend, however, is that the majority of active copyright holders of a collective work have the right to indicate a desire to change the license and to ask the remaining copyright holders to decline or not. If the others don't respond, they can be considered to have gone along with the change. The overall work's license choice does not have to be cast in concrete.
could Linus do the same thing to change the Linux kernel from a GPL license to a BSD license.
I think he'd get too much objection immediately.
A BSD license is more so compatible because it can be brought into a GPLed program but not a GPLed program into a BSD program.
Actually, the way this works is that if you combine the two pieces, the GPL applies to the whole. It's not so much a matter of bringing one into the other, as that the result is the same no matter which side is bigger.
There is one great advantage for GPL3 in the future. People are going to start to realize from the JMRI case that the simpler licenses do not protect you from software patent lawsuits from people who derive form your code. JMRI is model railroad software, and the developer was sued by the manufacturer of a model railroad throttle who integrated the JMRI software into his commercial product and patented some function of it. A really unscrupulous character. In the case of JMRI, the Artistic license was used, but I think it would have been the same for BSD. Developers need to be protected.
Actually, Heller is not saying that CC licenses can terminate. He's saying that you can't trust someone who uploaded a pictrue to flickr to be an actual copyright holder. And they can be a legal minor. I suppose we could fix this with digital signature and certification, if it was that important. Right now we just expect commercial users to employ due diligence, and they don't.
The other problem is the issue of model release, and I agree that a lot of people who CC license their work don't know about that.
Nobody in their right mind would trust a license that can be terminated arbitrarily. One day you could be legal, and the next not, without your doing anything wrong. That's why none of the Open Source licenses are allowed to do that.
So, I am very dubious that CC licenses can terminate.
Microsoft does DRM the way I'm talking about. They have a microkernel, called the "NIB", under their macrokernel. It is small, and implements the DRM as a service to the macrokernel above it. It can lock layers above it, which is necessary if the DRM device drivers live in those layers. However, if the DRM device drivers lived in the microkernel, you would be able to modify the kernel any way you wanted and it would not break the DRM.
Another way to handle this is to do the DRM in the audio and video output hardware, in which case you can just send an encrypted stream to the hardware with a kernel that does not need to be locekd down. This may be part of HDMI but I've not read enough about it.
All copyright licensing effects a political end, which is the private ownership and control of the right to copy. All law originates in politics, and most politics originates in economics.
There is nothing about the DRM provisions of GPL3 that matters where Busybox is concerned, because Busybox doesn't do the DRM.
Actually, I am working on a dual-licensed version of Busybox. It doesn't include the work of other folks, and does include a new UDEV implementation. People who don't support freedom can pay for the privilege, and I'll use that money to make more free code.
But for how long a period would holders of copyrights covered by the GPL 2 be allowed to respond? Would they be allowed to make these requests until the code falls into public domain?
Legally, a reasonable time period like 90 days should work, a month at the shortest. Linus has done this before (when he added a prelude to the GPL, and when he removed the GPL upgrade provision) and I think didn't even wait a month for opposition. But I think it would be best to honor removal requests forever, because whether or not you have to, fixing the code is easier than arguing about it in court. Obviously, you can't remove distributed instances, you can only remove it from the main source tree.
Code ages, and loses value as it does, especially in an active work like the kernel. You don't want code of folks who don't want to work with you any longer. And remember how long it took Linus to replace Bitkeeper? One month.
Now, everybody is responding with can I give legal notice to the RIAA? Of course not. RIAA did not contribute their work to your collaborative project. It is the fact that the overall work has multiple copyright holders that makes changing the license without the active participation of 100% of them possible.
The difference is that Linus manages a collaborative community to which the copyright holders have submitted their work. He has made license changes before through just this process. One was to put a prelude on the GPL explaining the system call exception, and another was to remove the GPL upgrade path.
Could a BSD developer do this to GPL software? No for two reasons. One, because the GPL software was not a contribution to his project. And two, because that changes the entire intent of the license, where a modification of GPL2 to GPL3 would not.
I am not an attorney, I just work with them a lot because I do corporate Open Source strategy for many big companies. I've discussed this particular question with multiple attorneys.
Richard sat down sometime in the early 1980's and forecast the world we'd have today and its problems. This was an astounding feat. Big companies try to find CEOs who can do that and pay them Millions. We have one who works for free. A lot of us won't listen to him, but that's often because he is too far ahead of us for us to understand.
Richard has his failings too. But if you watch him over a period of years, it becomes clear that he's right over and over again.
GPL3 supports DRM in non-GPL3 applications atop a GPL3 kernel, in hardware, and in microkernels under the GPL3 kernel. It is perfectly possible to implement DRM in a system with a GPL3 kernel.
The real question is would a move to GPL3 benefit your freedom? Unfortunately, Linus doesn't give a hoot about your freedom. Here's a practical example of the importance of freedom for those who aren't willing to consider it in the abstract. I have some Sony HDTV hard disk recorders. They are going to stop getting the TV guide and will stop having the ability to set their clock when the analog TV shutdown completes at the San Francisco PBS station (which broadcasts that data in its vertical interval). These devices use Linux and indeed they come with a copyright notice for Busybox (which I created). They are also DRM locked. Sony is just going to allow the devices to become bricks, even though they were sold as HDTV, rather than analog TV, recorders. I will have to somehow crack their DRM if I want the devices to be useful after next February. GPL3 would have given me a better ability to do this work and save my device from an uncaring vendor. GPL3 is also compatible with DRM for media, as long as the DRM isn't done in the GPL3 program. So, Sony could have used it, and could have made it more possible for this device to continue to live.
Would you please stop propogating that misinformation? Linus could change the license in one month, if he wanted to. It doesn't matter how many copyright holders are absent or dead. All he has to do is publish in a legal notice his intent and a clear means for any copyright holder in opposition to request removal of their work.
A license change (alteration of the terms of the GFDL) was recently done for Wikipedia which is a much bigger problem than the kernel due to the fact that it has tens of thousands of times as many copyright holders. FSF cooperated. It proceeded very quietly.
I believe the Display PostScript extension had alpha and Porter-Duff algebra (and tokenization). I suspect that some flavor of this may have come down to the Mac from NeXTStep, but I've not looked.
I'd better qualify that. Many Adobe Postscript rendering engines will render PDF directly. There are lots of printers that do, many of them do not, however, advertise the feature. GhostScript seems to try but not do as well. The actual image stream is a tokenized logical subset of PostScript, the image model is the same and there is a 1:1 mapping of operators. There's extra stuff in the file that isn't part of the image stream.
It's been 15 years since I've picked up the black-and-white book which defines PDF.
Slashdot Mirror
I think under 203(a)(3), you might have to wait 35 years to do that :-)
Alan is very strongly against DRM-locking the kernel. I don't know about Al Viro.
Bruce
I can buy an analog TV converter box because the government is paying for me to have two of them. I can not buy a TV Guide on Screen converter box because none is available and the format is proprietary and DRM-locked.
Bruce
The original copyright holder would have to perjure himself when asked if the material had ever been available under that license. And could have to go to jail if found out.
There are many ways to prevail in an injust civil case if you are willing to risk criminal prosecution for perjury to do it. This has nothing to do with CC.
Bruce
Back when MS was working on NT, some FSF folks went to a briefing and relayed what they'd heard. So, I have it all by hearsay.
I do more work in software, so am not the best one to explain this, although I'm sure there are legal guides for photographers.
Bruce
That's right. Anyone who objects to the change has the absolute right to tell you not to make such a change to their code. And then you take their code out.
What I contend, however, is that the majority of active copyright holders of a collective work have the right to indicate a desire to change the license and to ask the remaining copyright holders to decline or not. If the others don't respond, they can be considered to have gone along with the change. The overall work's license choice does not have to be cast in concrete.
could Linus do the same thing to change the Linux kernel from a GPL license to a BSD license.
I think he'd get too much objection immediately.
A BSD license is more so compatible because it can be brought into a GPLed program but not a GPLed program into a BSD program.
Actually, the way this works is that if you combine the two pieces, the GPL applies to the whole. It's not so much a matter of bringing one into the other, as that the result is the same no matter which side is bigger.
There is one great advantage for GPL3 in the future. People are going to start to realize from the JMRI case that the simpler licenses do not protect you from software patent lawsuits from people who derive form your code. JMRI is model railroad software, and the developer was sued by the manufacturer of a model railroad throttle who integrated the JMRI software into his commercial product and patented some function of it. A really unscrupulous character. In the case of JMRI, the Artistic license was used, but I think it would have been the same for BSD. Developers need to be protected.
Bruce
The other problem is the issue of model release, and I agree that a lot of people who CC license their work don't know about that.
So, I am very dubious that CC licenses can terminate.
Bruce
Microsoft does DRM the way I'm talking about. They have a microkernel, called the "NIB", under their macrokernel. It is small, and implements the DRM as a service to the macrokernel above it. It can lock layers above it, which is necessary if the DRM device drivers live in those layers. However, if the DRM device drivers lived in the microkernel, you would be able to modify the kernel any way you wanted and it would not break the DRM.
Another way to handle this is to do the DRM in the audio and video output hardware, in which case you can just send an encrypted stream to the hardware with a kernel that does not need to be locekd down. This may be part of HDMI but I've not read enough about it.
Bruce
All copyright licensing effects a political end, which is the private ownership and control of the right to copy. All law originates in politics, and most politics originates in economics.
Bruce
Actually, I am working on a dual-licensed version of Busybox. It doesn't include the work of other folks, and does include a new UDEV implementation. People who don't support freedom can pay for the privilege, and I'll use that money to make more free code.
Bruce
Legally, a reasonable time period like 90 days should work, a month at the shortest. Linus has done this before (when he added a prelude to the GPL, and when he removed the GPL upgrade provision) and I think didn't even wait a month for opposition. But I think it would be best to honor removal requests forever, because whether or not you have to, fixing the code is easier than arguing about it in court. Obviously, you can't remove distributed instances, you can only remove it from the main source tree.
Code ages, and loses value as it does, especially in an active work like the kernel. You don't want code of folks who don't want to work with you any longer. And remember how long it took Linus to replace Bitkeeper? One month.
Now, everybody is responding with can I give legal notice to the RIAA? Of course not. RIAA did not contribute their work to your collaborative project. It is the fact that the overall work has multiple copyright holders that makes changing the license without the active participation of 100% of them possible.
Bruce
Could a BSD developer do this to GPL software? No for two reasons. One, because the GPL software was not a contribution to his project. And two, because that changes the entire intent of the license, where a modification of GPL2 to GPL3 would not.
I am not an attorney, I just work with them a lot because I do corporate Open Source strategy for many big companies. I've discussed this particular question with multiple attorneys.
Bruce
Bruce
Richard has his failings too. But if you watch him over a period of years, it becomes clear that he's right over and over again.
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
A license change (alteration of the terms of the GFDL) was recently done for Wikipedia which is a much bigger problem than the kernel due to the fact that it has tens of thousands of times as many copyright holders. FSF cooperated. It proceeded very quietly.
Bruce
Yes, they voted against OOXML. I met the Minister earlier this year and she was very well informed about it.
I believe the Display PostScript extension had alpha and Porter-Duff algebra (and tokenization). I suspect that some flavor of this may have come down to the Mac from NeXTStep, but I've not looked.
It's been 15 years since I've picked up the black-and-white book which defines PDF.
Thanks
Bruce
The circular. I think this is missing some details that were recommended (like don't encrypt your postscript) that may appear elsewhere.