discuss: Re: LDP License loophole: (was LDP Licence: a post-2.0 modest proposal)
Subject:
Re: LDP License loophole: (was LDP Licence: a post-2.0 modest proposal)
From:
Rick Moen ####@####.####
Date:
27 Dec 2003 06:13:35 -0000
Message-Id: <20031227061334.GC1166@linuxmafia.com>
Quoting David Lawyer ####@####.####
> What you seem to fail to understand is that the rights given
> exclusively to the copyright owner can be given away to others via a
> license.
No, read the statute.
> For example, a copyright owner is given by law the exclusive right to
> make copies, but a license can give that right away to the world.
No, that right is not given away: Its application is specified by the
copyright holder.
> That's why anyone can make copies of LDP documents.
Anyone may make copies of an LDP document whose copyright holder has
granted that right as to the instance sent to the LDP, _because_ he has
granted that right.
> The copyright owner has relinquished his/her exclusive right.
No, he has affirmatively granted that right, ordinarily reserved to him,
as to a specific instance. He might issue other instances of the work
without that right.
Example: Alice issues to the public two instances of runtime engine
foo. Instance A is under GNU GPL. Instance B is under a proprietary
licence. She chooses to issue instance A in order to promote her
software design, knowing that no competitor may lawfully incorporate it
into a proprietary competing product. Her main goal is to sell copies
of B for a living, having popularised it through the release of A,
letting people pay money for rights they don't get with A, including
inclusion of the codebase into proprietary products.
Has she issued a licence allowing people to make an infinite number of
copies? Certainly -- as to instance A, but not instance B. Thus, has
she relinquished her exclusive title to the right to copy? No, not
really.
> Ditto for the right to make derivative works and relicense them.
Sorry, this is still wrong.
As mentioned, "relicensing" is an infamously misleading term that
longtime open-source people generally work hard to keep _out_ of licence
discussions, because of its record for horrifically misleading people,
and causing massive wastes of time. Copyright holders can issue the
right to select which of numerous licences to accept an instance under
-- e.g., Sun with OpenOffice.org code being acceptable under GPL/LGPL or
SISSL or a proprietary licence -- but the right to specify the scope of
rights to their property is their sole purview.
> Actually, the copyright law I looked at says nothing about licenses,
> which are often considered to be contracts.
{sigh} The question of contract formation (or not) is irrelevant to
the enforceability and effect of most open-source licences. The
question doesn't therefore arise, as the scope of copyright law
suffices.
> GPL considers itself to be a contract.
By all that's holy, David: -=Are you trolling=-, by some chance? I
certainly hope so.
GPLv2 (just like GPLv1) proclaims itself _explicitly_ to operate under
copyright law, _not_ contract law. It says so right in section 0.
--
Cheers, "That scruffy beard... those suspenders... that smug ex-
Rick Moen pression.... You're one of those condescending Unix users!"
####@####.#### "Here's a nickel, kid. Get yourself a real computer."
-- Dilbert
