If you ship something by UPS, they are doing the shipping on your behalf, you are the one with legal liability. In contrast, Microsoft showed detailed knowledge of the product's provenance and its licensing in their announcements, etc., and is having Novell ship it and render services (including modified copies) on Microsoft's behalf.
Until you take out the GPL part, the GPL terms apply to the entire work. You might not believe it's so, but no real attorney has seen fit to fight that one. They all settle.
I think you're exaggerating about the email count and content. And there are no "gnu license enforcement police". There's an engineer whose job that is, really quite a nice guy and not the sort of person who will bring lawsuits at the drop of a hat. Actually, I don't believe the FSF has ever brought a lawsuit.
Are you intentionally trying to make Stallman out to be Jesus?
I do not happen to be a member of a religion that preaches belief in Jesus. On the other hand, I have experience that Richard is a living individual:-)
The original posting "my computer doesn't understand licenses" was sort of deliberately simplistic and childlike, and this may have flavored my response.
Then again, the spirit of St. IGNUtious may have posessed me. Here, child, you may have an icon of St. IGNUtious.
You mean the FUD campaign against the BSD software's provenance waged by ATT in the early 90's?
I know there were lots of arguments about BSD vs. GPL, but the BSD license does have the virtue that it's easy to understand. I don't think it's possible to FUD a license that simple.
Mr Wilder, had you sincrely wished to solve any problems with GPL3, there were avenues open to you including participation in the committees and use of the feedback process. But that's not your role here. Your employer is a lobbying front for Microsoft, a company that has a vested interest in spreading fear and doubt about GPL3.
I checked with Eben Moglen, general counsel of the Free Software foundation, before writing a rebuttal to the eWeek material. Moglen had seen your paper and did not consider it worth his time to respond.
I responded to your quotes in eWeek since they had already run in the press. I have no desire to propogate the rest of your material.
I think it would be helpful for you to debate your material with an attorney supporting GPL3, instead of me. Unfortunately, we have not yet found an attorney who sees sufficient merit in your work to find it interesting to engage you.
Unfortunately, dispite his background, his goal here was not to sincerely contribute to the GPL development. He could have done that by participating on the committee, or using the feedback process. Eben Moglen, the general counsel for FSF, read his paper and declined to respond to him. No doubt others on the GPL committee have also read the paper.
But, really, how about a separate analysis of LGPL v3? Can an LGPL v3 library be linked to a closed source device that uses DRM with unknown keys?
As long as you can change the library without limitation. Don't lock down that library. And your DRM must not depend on the integrity of that library to work.
OT, I know, but Bruce... c'mon. It's impolite to usurp all of the +5 mods on an article about yourself!
I'd rather you hear it from the horse's mouth than from the other end of the horse:-) I guess that's a pretty good description of ACT's lawyer, isn't it?
One notable instance where creators (companies or no) often prefer a gift license over a sharing with rules license is when the software promotes a standard, where adoption of the standard (and a uniform reference platform for same) is often more important than the implementation itself.
I state this in paper on which Open Source license to choose that I give to corporate customers. If you really want everybody to adopt it, even your worst enemy, use BSD. But then don't complain if they make it work incompatibly from your version, as Microsoft is wont to do.
There is no practical way for [Linus] to contact all copyright holders to get approval for a switch in the license. The Linux kernel will always be GPL2.
Fortunately, it's not as big a problem as you believe. But how can the Linux kernel project, with its thousands of developers, change its license? We can't even reach them all, and some of those developers are dead and their estates don't know software licenses from driver's licenses. But changing the license is easier than most people think.
First, it's not a fundamental change: the intent of GPL 3 is that of GPL 2, the change is in the implementation. Given that, what would be required for such a change would be for Torvalds (or someone else) to publish his intent to start making releases with the new license, as a legal notice. A certain number of people would object, and they would have the right to require that their contributions be removed from the new release.
The kernel team has never been loath to replace code when necessary, and never slow to handle the job, no matter how large the item to be replaced. Just look at the replacement of Bitkeeper with "git", a big job that took a ground-up rewrite and yet was working in five weeks. So, code belonging to GPL3-objectors would be swiftly dealt with.
After some time passed, the release would happen under the new license, and life would go on. There is precedent for this, as Torvalds has already made two significant changes to the prelude to GPL2 on the kernel, publishing his intent and then making a release.
Thank you. You might find this one useful as well. I wrote it just before GPL3 version 3 came out, the conclusions are unchanged upon reading the third draft. The scope of GPL3's tivo-ization restrictions has been reduced somewhat, but my advice on how a company could handle DRM still applies.
And those forks will have to be significantly better than the GPL3 originals if they are to last longer than a month or two. I can count the number of successful forks on one hand.
They will be significantly better for people who prefer GPL2 over GPL3.
That won't be the users, since GPL3 doesn't restrict them at all. So, a GPL2 fork of any GPL3 product will need to be technically better to attract the users. It's unlikely that anyone motivated to fork backward to GPL2 will be able to muster sufficient community resources to make such a thing better than the GPL3 version.
Perens thinks that with the Novell-MS deal, MS is granting rights to all their patents that may be used in a SUSE distribution for any use in any GPL software. And this under the current GPL 2.
This started with a legal theory that Eben Moglen, FSF general counsel, gave at the FSF annual meeting. Someone should interview him on it.
my computer doesn't parse licenses, it works just fine without one
Then, you are not running any recent Mac or Windows system. Your computer probably depends on the work of people who would not have released their code at all without the GPL. Like the GCC developers, for example, whose work started with Richard Stallman's first implementation. GCC is most likely used to compile the system you are running.
Richard Stallman agrees with you. He doesn't restrict your right to use the software. It is copyright law that restricts your right to distribute other people's software, to modify it, etc. Richard would rather that there were no copyright law. Since there is, he uses the GPL to turn copyright law upon its head as well as he can.
Giving away coupons makes Microsoft a distributor of GPL2 software as much as giving away free BigMac coupons makes a radio station a BigMac distributor.
The word "coupons" might have led you astray. What Microsoft is giving out is paid-up Novell licenses which Microsoft pays for. Either the distribution or support inherent in those licenses, which is done on Microsoft's behalf, involves copying: a direct infringement if you haven't agreed to the license. And there is also the potential for contributory and vicarious infringement in the law. In contrast, when a radio station gives out Big Mac coupons, it is always doing so on behalf of Macdonands, who is paying for that form of advertising. So, it's not the same thing at all.
You could argue that the restrictions that GPLv3 is intended to prevent -- web services running off GPL software without sharing code, for example -- are a marketplace effort to move open source licensing closer to BSD-style.
Well, this might be moot because GPL3 won't prevent the performance of web services using undisclosed modified internal GPL3 code. RMS feels that this is your right, and has only provided a way for people to optionally apply the Afero GPL, which does prevent this, to GPL3 code.
But your posting touches on a more fundamental topic, where the market is attempting to move Open Source licensing. There will always be a difference between the goals of companies who offer licenses along with their developed code, and companies who receive those licenses. Companies that receive Open Source code will always want BSD-style licensing as it gives them more options to keep their own development using that code proprietary. Companies that release Open Source code will tend to want a more restrictive license as this enables a dual-licensing revenue stream so that they can charge those folks who want to keep their development proprietary.
We can leave the motivation of non-companies to another discussion, since your question did not touch upon it, but they often have reasons to want a sharing with rules (GPL) license over a gift (BSD) license. And of course a detailed discussion of motivation for gift or sharing licenses would be much larger than this little posting.
OK. Maybe I'm just behind the times or something, but what was "wrong" with GPLv2?
GPL has never stood alone, it has always depended on the local interpretation of copyright and other law to give it force, and those things change over time.
When the GPL was written, there was no web, music came from phonograph records, video from tape, and rather than DRM there was rudimentary software "copy protection". The renaissance of microprocessors, software, the web and digital media worked a tremendous change in the law with many changes to copyright, patents, the nature of consent, contracts, tear-open licenses, and copyright permissions. And there have been many trials over those years that added interpretation to laws that GPL 2 depends upon. As the law changes, GPL must change to keep up with it, or it will become increasingly un-enforcible.
you'll realize that the GNU part (at least the non-LGPL) almost certainly will be GPLv3.
All the talk of GPL3 has overwhelmed the fact that there is an LGPL3, which will share most of the GPL3 language. It will most certainly be applied to GNU LIBC.
As has been reported here previously, Linus is actually pleased with GPL3 draft 3, and will at least consider placing the kernel under GPL3. He really did not like previous drafts. But even if the kernel stays at GPL2, the C library, the main library in a Linux-based distribution, would go to LGPL3, it's copyright is owned by FSF in full. So are GCC, Emacs, a number of other programs. And no doubt other projects will go to GPL3.
The first thing I noticed when I got my Prius away from the dealer was that I tended to drive it too fast. It was well balanced and would go 80 so smoothly that I thought it was 60. They (at least generation 4) are probably over-powered for what they are supposed to be, accomodating American big-power tastes.
Copyright infringement only occurs when someone other than the copyright holder attempts to distribute a copyrighted work without permission of the copyright holder.
While this might be literally true when the applicable license is the GPL, your words could confuse many readers about the grounds for copyright infringement. It actually happens through the exercise of any of these rights that are restricted only to the copyright holder, to the extent that they aren't granted by the license:
1. the right to reproduce (copy),
2. the right to create derivative works of the original work,
3. the right to sell, lease, or rent copies of the work to the public,
4. the right to perform the work publicly (if the work is a literary, musical, dramatic, choreographic, pantomime, motion picture, or other audiovisual work), and
5. the right to display the work publicly (if the work is a literary, musical, dramatic, choreographic, pantomime, pictorial, graphic, sculptural, motion picture, or other audiovisual work).[3]
That's from Wikipedia.
Although GPL would grant you the right to reproduce in general, many non-GPL works do not even grant you the right to make copies for personal use without distribution.
Slashdot Mirror
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
Well, it's easy to remove the GPL part, but until you do...
I do not happen to be a member of a religion that preaches belief in Jesus. On the other hand, I have experience that Richard is a living individual :-)
The original posting "my computer doesn't understand licenses" was sort of deliberately simplistic and childlike, and this may have flavored my response.
Then again, the spirit of St. IGNUtious may have posessed me. Here, child, you may have an icon of St. IGNUtious.
Bruce
I know there were lots of arguments about BSD vs. GPL, but the BSD license does have the virtue that it's easy to understand. I don't think it's possible to FUD a license that simple.
Bruce
I checked with Eben Moglen, general counsel of the Free Software foundation, before writing a rebuttal to the eWeek material. Moglen had seen your paper and did not consider it worth his time to respond.
I responded to your quotes in eWeek since they had already run in the press. I have no desire to propogate the rest of your material.
I think it would be helpful for you to debate your material with an attorney supporting GPL3, instead of me. Unfortunately, we have not yet found an attorney who sees sufficient merit in your work to find it interesting to engage you.
Bruce
Bruce
As long as you can change the library without limitation. Don't lock down that library. And your DRM must not depend on the integrity of that library to work.
Bruce
I'd rather you hear it from the horse's mouth than from the other end of the horse :-) I guess that's a pretty good description of ACT's lawyer, isn't it?
Bruce
I state this in paper on which Open Source license to choose that I give to corporate customers. If you really want everybody to adopt it, even your worst enemy, use BSD. But then don't complain if they make it work incompatibly from your version, as Microsoft is wont to do.
Bruce
Fortunately, it's not as big a problem as you believe. But how can the Linux kernel project, with its thousands of developers, change its license? We can't even reach them all, and some of those developers are dead and their estates don't know software licenses from driver's licenses. But changing the license is easier than most people think.
First, it's not a fundamental change: the intent of GPL 3 is that of GPL 2, the change is in the implementation. Given that, what would be required for such a change would be for Torvalds (or someone else) to publish his intent to start making releases with the new license, as a legal notice. A certain number of people would object, and they would have the right to require that their contributions be removed from the new release.
The kernel team has never been loath to replace code when necessary, and never slow to handle the job, no matter how large the item to be replaced. Just look at the replacement of Bitkeeper with "git", a big job that took a ground-up rewrite and yet was working in five weeks. So, code belonging to GPL3-objectors would be swiftly dealt with.
After some time passed, the release would happen under the new license, and life would go on. There is precedent for this, as Torvalds has already made two significant changes to the prelude to GPL2 on the kernel, publishing his intent and then making a release.
Bruce
Why has *BSD acheived less of a market than Linux? Which of these popular reasons do you believe?
:-)
Bruce
Bruce
That won't be the users, since GPL3 doesn't restrict them at all. So, a GPL2 fork of any GPL3 product will need to be technically better to attract the users. It's unlikely that anyone motivated to fork backward to GPL2 will be able to muster sufficient community resources to make such a thing better than the GPL3 version.
Bruce
This started with a legal theory that Eben Moglen, FSF general counsel, gave at the FSF annual meeting. Someone should interview him on it.
Bruce
Then, you are not running any recent Mac or Windows system. Your computer probably depends on the work of people who would not have released their code at all without the GPL. Like the GCC developers, for example, whose work started with Richard Stallman's first implementation. GCC is most likely used to compile the system you are running.
Richard Stallman agrees with you. He doesn't restrict your right to use the software. It is copyright law that restricts your right to distribute other people's software, to modify it, etc. Richard would rather that there were no copyright law. Since there is, he uses the GPL to turn copyright law upon its head as well as he can.
Bruce
The word "coupons" might have led you astray. What Microsoft is giving out is paid-up Novell licenses which Microsoft pays for. Either the distribution or support inherent in those licenses, which is done on Microsoft's behalf, involves copying: a direct infringement if you haven't agreed to the license. And there is also the potential for contributory and vicarious infringement in the law. In contrast, when a radio station gives out Big Mac coupons, it is always doing so on behalf of Macdonands, who is paying for that form of advertising. So, it's not the same thing at all.
Bruce
Well, this might be moot because GPL3 won't prevent the performance of web services using undisclosed modified internal GPL3 code. RMS feels that this is your right, and has only provided a way for people to optionally apply the Afero GPL, which does prevent this, to GPL3 code.
But your posting touches on a more fundamental topic, where the market is attempting to move Open Source licensing. There will always be a difference between the goals of companies who offer licenses along with their developed code, and companies who receive those licenses. Companies that receive Open Source code will always want BSD-style licensing as it gives them more options to keep their own development using that code proprietary. Companies that release Open Source code will tend to want a more restrictive license as this enables a dual-licensing revenue stream so that they can charge those folks who want to keep their development proprietary.
We can leave the motivation of non-companies to another discussion, since your question did not touch upon it, but they often have reasons to want a sharing with rules (GPL) license over a gift (BSD) license. And of course a detailed discussion of motivation for gift or sharing licenses would be much larger than this little posting.
Thanks
Bruce
GPL has never stood alone, it has always depended on the local interpretation of copyright and other law to give it force, and those things change over time.
When the GPL was written, there was no web, music came from phonograph records, video from tape, and rather than DRM there was rudimentary software "copy protection". The renaissance of microprocessors, software, the web and digital media worked a tremendous change in the law with many changes to copyright, patents, the nature of consent, contracts, tear-open licenses, and copyright permissions. And there have been many trials over those years that added interpretation to laws that GPL 2 depends upon. As the law changes, GPL must change to keep up with it, or it will become increasingly un-enforcible.
Thanks
Bruce
All the talk of GPL3 has overwhelmed the fact that there is an LGPL3, which will share most of the GPL3 language. It will most certainly be applied to GNU LIBC.
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
While this might be literally true when the applicable license is the GPL, your words could confuse many readers about the grounds for copyright infringement. It actually happens through the exercise of any of these rights that are restricted only to the copyright holder, to the extent that they aren't granted by the license:
1. the right to reproduce (copy),
2. the right to create derivative works of the original work,
3. the right to sell, lease, or rent copies of the work to the public,
4. the right to perform the work publicly (if the work is a literary, musical, dramatic, choreographic, pantomime, motion picture, or other audiovisual work), and
5. the right to display the work publicly (if the work is a literary, musical, dramatic, choreographic, pantomime, pictorial, graphic, sculptural, motion picture, or other audiovisual work).[3]
That's from Wikipedia.
Although GPL would grant you the right to reproduce in general, many non-GPL works do not even grant you the right to make copies for personal use without distribution.
Thanks
Bruce